The latest update to Fiksu’s App Store Competitive Index finds rising advertising costs for the mobile development industry. The cost per loyal user (CPLU) index reached an all-time high of $4.04 in August 2015. That was a 36 percent increase from July, and a 117 percent increase from August 2014. The cost per install (CPI) index was at $1.32, which was down slightly from the previous month but up 26 percent year-over-year.
Interestingly, Fiksu does not expect the rise in ad blockers to affect the mobile development industry much because ad blockers affect Web traffic and most mobile apps are advertising on other apps. The company also found that the top 200 free iOS apps were downloaded an average of 8.1 million times per day in August, a 53 percent year-over-year increase.