The cost of attracting a user jumped to $6

According to Michael Oiknine, director of Apsalar, for the Catholic Easter, already held on April 8, the cost of attracting a mobile user was a record $6. 

The growth was due not only to the holiday weekends, when people had time to relax (and therefore play), but also a whole series of large industrial purchases, as well as powerful releases. 

Zynga and TinyCo games have always been popular, but this time GREE had the strongest influence on the cost of attracting users. Last March, the Japanese company released its first two f2p projects made in the USA: Zombie Jombie and Alien Family.

Angry Birds Space and Draw Something also contributed. Both projects are still on the charts and boast big download numbers. 

Big purchases – big prices

But judging by the latest acquisitions of market leaders, $6 is far from the limit. 

When Zynga acquired OMGPOP, it paid $16 for each Draw Something user. However, considering that the game’s audience has grown significantly since the deal, this figure can be safely divided by 2.

Facebook Instagrammed Instagram the other day, and after paying $1 billion for the company, in fact, paid about $30 for each of its users. 

And the meaning?

From an economic point of view, as Oiknin notes, everything is simple here. It makes sense to buy a user for $6 if his LTV (Lifetime value) is more than $6. 

The problem is that even with a conversion rate of 10% (a relatively high figure, given that on average its level fluctuates around 5%), you have to pull out $60 from each paying player to reach zero. 

So now the main task is to understand who is paying and who is not. And focus your attention on the latter.

Seriously

The explanations of Oiknine from Apsalar seemed strange to us on App2Top and far from exhaustive, especially since data on the cost of attracting a user from Fiksu for February were published not so long ago. Recall, according to them, the CPA (cost per acquisition) on iOS then amounted to $ 1.31. On the other hand, Fiksu analysts themselves warned that there would be jumps in value closer to the summer. However, Fiksu either did not know that they would be so impressive, or did not want to excite the market ahead of time.

Be that as it may, it is already clear that small single companies in the mobile market are having an increasingly difficult time. In turn, the role of publishers is being updated. 

The market, on the whole, can only hope that such a significant jump was a one-time one and in May the CPA will decline.  

A source: http://www.pocketgamer.biz