Cost Per Installation – More Downloads for Your App

App developers often need to help apps achieve more downloads in various ways, and advertising is one of the ways to achieve more app exposure. In the current status of advertising platforms, social media advertising based on Facebook has become very effective. For app advertising, the CPI bidding method is the most effective.

What is cost per installation?

CPI is cost per installation, and it represents the cost for users to install your app every time through your advertisement. CPI is often much higher than CPC and CPM, because CPI achieves the final conversion-app installation. The CPI bidding method can help you quickly acquire seed users, and if the user has not completed the app download but only the advertisement exposure is achieved, you do not need to spend a penny for this. This means that your advertising achieves brand promotion, but you do not need to pay for it.

Cost per installation benchmarks

CPC advertising costs are often less than $1, and only a small number of countries will cost more than $1. CPM is generally $5~$10, and the cost of countries such as India will be lower than this standard. And what is the CPI benchmark? ADCostly is a Facebook ads cost benchmark tool, we can find the information here.

IOS CPI Benchmarks

The CPI change trend of the gaming app in the IOS system is as above. We can understand that the CPI of the overall gaming app is between $4~$8, which means that the installation of a gaming app requires about $4~$8. Obviously this is better than the CPC bid. Extending the time to 180 days, the peak CPI reached $8.8, and the lowest is still not lower than $4. Therefore, if you place a gaming app advertisement on IOS, it is normal as long as the CPI is between $4~$8.

Gaming app advertising CPI in IOS has a large gap between male and female. The average CPI for male is about $4.8, and the average CPI for female is about $6.74. The cost of downloading an app for female is generally higher than that for male, so for different types of apps, you need to consider the gender factor. From the timeline, the average CPI of male is as low as over $4, which is a number worth paying attention to.

In terms of age, males between 45-54 have the highest CPI, about $10.35, while the average female CPI is 65+. On the whole, the younger the age, the lower the average CPI, which is a general rule. Older audiences are not interested in gaming apps.

Looking at the country/area, Taiwan (China) has the highest CPI for gaming apps, with a CPI exceeding $10, and Japan ranking second with an average CPI of $9.54. Some countries with low CPI recommend Singapore, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Their average CPI fluctuates around $5.

Android CPI Benchmarks

The average CPI of gaming app on Android is significantly lower than that of IOS. The average CPI of Android fluctuates between $2~$5, and the average CPI has increased recently.

From a gender perspective, the male CPI is still lower than the female CPI. It is worth mentioning that the average CPI for both male and female is lower than the average CPI of IOS. The average CPI for Android male is about $1.59, and the average CPI for female is about $2.23. The recent average CPI data has increased.

In terms of age, the age group with the highest average CPI for male is 45 to 54 years old, and the average age group for female with the highest CPI is 55 to 64 years old, and the average CPI is about $5.42. There is not much difference in CPI between male in different age ranges, and there is a big difference in CPI among female in different age.

The average CPI of Android games varies greatly among countries/areas. The average CPI of Japan is about $16.1, which is very expensive. The second-ranked country/area is Hong Kong (China), with an average CPI of about $7.85, and Australia ranks third with an average CPI of about $7.49. The last three countries/areas are Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. The average CPI is about $3.

These data are the average CPI of gaming apps, and the average CPI of non-gaming and e-commerce ads can be viewed at ADCostly. In addition, average CPC, CPM, CTR and CPA data can also be easily obtained.

Tips to help your app download increase

Country/area targeting reduces Facebook advertising costs

City targeting is one of the ways to help your ads display better. Generally speaking, audiences tend to gather in some countries. When your ads are placed in the target country/area or city, your advertising effect will be very good. According to the above country/area analysis, some countries can provide you with reference: the United States, China, Germany, Japan, India, Brazil and Australia. Take the United States as an example. Our first tendency is to focus on people in California and New York, because there are many startups there. At the same time, Florida may also be a good place.

Use custom audiences and lookalike audiences

Your ad needs to select an audience when it is created. This includes multiple options such as age, gender, and interest. These options are also to narrow the audience and improve user accuracy. When building custom audiences, we need some user portraits to help us make further judgments. AdTargeting is a Facebook interest targeting tool that can help us sort out a series of related interests and similar audiences, and each interest audience situation has a clear description.

Maintain control of ad auctions

Before you start testing manual bidding for your campaign, it’s recommended to set a standard cost for each goal. The cost can be set according to the cost benchmark provided by ADCostly. For example, if you know that each conversion costs about $11 on average, you can slowly lower your target bid to see if you can find cheaper conversions with the same budget.

Suppose your customer acquisition cost is $5, and you want to beat your competitors to succeed. You can set the maximum bid (bid cap) to $7.50 to see if raising the bid can create more potential customers. You can then adjust your ad bids in the campaign. Slowly increase your bids until you get the desired advertising performance. But if you don’t understand the standards, it is difficult to determine how much to bid. ADCostly is very necessary.