It's been about a month since the app marketing gurus at Fiksu first reported their findings on the legitimacy of all those ads we've grown accustomed to in the Facebook app. As our own Carter Dotson noted, there was an increase of 14.6 million downloads of the top 200 free apps per day throughout the month of May. That's a lot of downloads, and it was pretty much all because of those Facebook ads. Now the numbers for June are in, and it doesn't look like the trend is going away. If anything it seems to be building momentum.

Fiksu's Cost per Loyal User Index, used for measuring the average cost of earning a loyal user (i.e. opens the app three or more times), shows that values have jumped back up to $1.50 for the month of June. What this means is that it's costing advertisers more money on average - about $0.17 more when compared to May - to attract customers, which Fisku believes is due to a recent influx of developers and publishers looking to advertise on the social media platform.

On the other hand their App Store Competitive Index, which tracks the average download volume of the top 200 free U.S. apps each day, is showing a decrease of about 9 million total downloads for the month of June as compared to May. A loss of 9 million downloads in one month definitely sounds like one heck of a drop-off, however it's still a one million download improvement over last year's numbers; which they attribute to the App Store's perpetual state of competition.

So those slightly annoying but easily ignored ads we usually gloss over while letting all our friends know what we're eating for dinner and where, possibly with an accompanying photo, actually serve a purpose. A significant purpose. And it looks like advertisers are going to be fighting over the top spot for some time to come.

Posted in: News, App Store Insiders
Tagged With: Facebook, Marketing, Apps, Ads, Fiksu
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