• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, November 10, 2015

Mobile customer acquisition is getting more expensive, but YouAppi thinks it has a solution to make customer acquisition more cost-effective.

YouAppi OneRun claims the ability to attribute users to cohorts, which can anticipate usage behavior and patterns.

The company’s significant scale lends some credence to its claims: YouAppi now reaches 1.1 billion mobile user profiles, as well as 3,000 mobile apps and Web sites.

By grouping users with similar characteristics into cohorts, and then further segmenting them in categories like travel, shopping, games, entertainment and lifestyle, YouAppi is able to predict which user groups will most likely convert and remain loyal customers.

These predictions can help mobile advertisers and marketers to focus their acquisition spending on the portions of their audience that will be effective partners.

YouAppi also collects data on about 25 points like location, gender and age, as well as interests, allowing marketers to identify trends from the results by grouping together similar user actions.

Cost-effectiveness in mobile customer acquisition is key as costs per install rise. According to Fiksu, September costs per install for iOS and Android have risen 24% and 87% YoY, respectively; iOS CPI is $1.53 and on Android it is $1.88. Loyal users, or people who open an app three times or more, cost $4.14 in September, an increase of 84% YoY.

The company says that their biggest point of differentiation from other companies is their reliance on first-party data from their own system. All the data being aggregated is non-PII, derived from actions and post-install events with apps downloaded via YouAppi and not from external partners or data aggregators.