Liftoff Releases Q2 2015 Mobile App Engagement Index

Every quarter, we here at Liftoff analyze the app engagement data we collected over the last quarter and publish our findings in the Liftoff Mobile App Engagement Index. For our new Q2 2015 report, we analyzed more than 39 million app installs and 910 million post-install events to uncover some fascinating trends in six major app categories: Shopping, Social Media, Travel, Dating, Utilities and Financial apps.

Within these categories we look at specific consumer actions most commonly defined in Liftoff campaigns as key performance indicators (KPIs) of an app’s success including installation, registration, content sharing, purchases, subscriptions and reservations. What we found was a distinct cooling off period post-holiday, with the cost per action (CPA) decreasing for most KPIs compared to Q1. The notable exception in this trend was the cost per reservation.

Interestingly, our Index shows that Android apps have begun to catch up with their iOS counterparts when it comes to direct revenue generation. In Q1, we noted it was 20% cheaper to acquire a first time purchaser on iOS than Android; that number dropped significantly to a margin of only 4% by the end of Q2. The costs to acquire a subscriber followed a similar trend though to a lesser extent.

Some additional key findings:

• While CPAs have generally decreased, the cost for driving the initial install of an app has remained relatively flat.
• The cost to drive a paid subscription has dropped on average $10 per month since October of 2014.
• The cost to acquire a registered user on an Android app remains significantly less than on iOS – a massive 43% lower.
• Finance apps have the highest cost per registration (over $16)  among all the analyzed app categories, with travel coming in a close second.

To view the complete report, download it here.