The 2012 holiday season proved a more cost-effective period for mobile marketers than the same time a year earlier, according to Fiksu’s Cost per Loyal User Index. The cost-per-acquisition of a loyal user hit a record high in 2011 at $1.81 on Fiksu’s network, while Christmas this year reached just $1.67, up 21 per cent from November’s $1.38.

Downloads were also down from 6.04m on average per day for the top 200 free iPhone apps in the US during December 2011, to 5.32m daily downloads during the same month in 2012. According to the Fiksu App Store Competitive Index, this was an increase of 16 per cent on the previous month. 

“Mobile app marketers are a year older and wiser, and we saw this reflected in the December Fiksu Indexes. Unlike the spending frenzy we saw in 2011, many opted for a value-versus-volume approach in 2012, collectively applying a more conservative, sophisticated strategy to their Q4 campaigns and largely avoiding big gambles on a long App Store freeze,” said Micah Adler, CEO, Fiksu. “As a result, marketing dollars were spread to the long tail of apps outside the top 200, and the peaks in volume and cost per loyal user, while still significant, weren’t as extreme as they were in 2011.”