Liftoff Releases 2016 Mobile App Engagement Index; Details CPA Trends Across App Categories, Platforms and Gender

We’re excited to release the 2016 Liftoff Mobile App Engagement Index. The purpose of this Index is to give mobile marketers a way to benchmark the performance of their mobile user acquisition and retargeting campaigns.

The Index examines mobile CPA and engagement rates from January through June of 2016, providing benchmarks for app install campaigns. The Index seeks to answer questions on engagement across categories, platforms and gender. For the first time, we analyzed Gaming as an engagement category.

One of the biggest findings was women are nearly 34 percent more likely to make a purchase within a mobile app than men. We also learned that females are 40 percent less expensive to acquire than men. The conclusion drawn is retail app marketers should profile, target and engage with women.

The Index is based on an analysis of more than 7.3 million app installs and 65 million post install events. 67% took place occurred in North America, 33% occurred in EMEA and APAC. The Index tracks the costs of app Installs, Registrations, Purchases, Subscriptions, Reservations, and In-App Purchases and further breaks down those costs per action (CPA) across gender and operating systems. Five major app categories were included: Shopping, Finance, Gaming, Travel, and Utility.