• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 29, 2012

The cost to acquire app users fell in May, even as the number of downloads increased, according to the latest data from Fiksu.

The mobile app marketing firm, which tracks the marketing costs developers spend to gain a loyal customer—one who opens an app at least three times after download—said that cost had fallen by 13.7% in May to $1.26 from $1.46 in April.
 
Why the drop? Fiksu suggested confusion stemming from Apple’s decision to restrict use of iOS device’s unique device identifiers (UDIDs) for app and ad targeting. Plus, the emergence of a group alternative tracking methods dampened marketers’ seasonal push behind apps.
 
“In May, marketers began gearing up for the summer months which, historically, have presented increased opportunity for app promotion,” said Micah Adler, CEO, Fiksu. “Yet amid concern around Apple’s speculated deprecation of UDID, compounded by a host of confusing alternative UDID-less tracking technologies, we observed inertia. It appears that brands’ caution may have contributed to the dip in acquisition costs.”
 
Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported Apple was planning to introduce a replacement to the UDID, which the company is abandoning over privacy concerns, in the coming weeks. The new solution could end up being included the iO6 update expected this fall.
 
Fiksu—which also tracks daily downloads of the top 200 free iPhone apps—said downloads increased 7.3% to 4.54 million in May from 4.23 million in April. If the same patterns persists durign the summer, per-user acquisition costs could fall even further.