What Is Cost-Per-Install Advertising?

Picture this: It took you months to conceive of, design, build and launch your mobile application. This application is going to connect you directly to your most loyal customers, allowing you to engage more deeply with them and make your brand an integral part of their daily life. This labor of love is going to take your business to the next level.

But Where Are Your Users?

The unfortunate truth is that your work is not done after your app launches. The next challenge is to make people who fit your target profile aware of your app—and then to convince them to download it. App publishers like you have access to a range of methods to promote their apps and drive users to install them.

Learn more about Phase 3 of the Mobile App Lifecycle and how to target and acquire high-value users; grow your app user base in our eBook, “Harnessing the App Lifecycle for Transformative Business Success.“

DOWNLOAD THE eBOOK

One of the most effective is advertising your app inside of other apps and on mobile websites that are used by people similar to your target audience. There are several different performance-based shapes this arrangement can take:

• Cost-per-mille (CPM)
• Cost-per-click (CPC)
• Cost-per-install (CPI)

Each method can result in new installs; the difference is in how the publisher is billed for the advertisement. When considering mobile advertising to drive installs, you need a clear understanding of how to measure the success and cost of each campaign.

Digital Advertising Primer

Digital advertising began with CPM, which is a traditional advertising term with roots in print. It is a cost model based on the number of impressions served, and it’s great for building awareness of a brand or an application. Brands pay the ad network for every mille—1000 times—the advertisement is displayed to a user on a mobile platform.

CPC is a more performance-based method of advertising than CPM because brands only pay the network if users click (or tap) on their advertisements. This method of advertising is effective because the ad network has skin in the game. It’s in the network’s own best interest to run the ads where they’re most likely to see engagement—that’s how the network gets paid.

And finally, CPI campaigns are specific to mobile applications. In a cost-per-install campaign, publishers place digital ads across a range of media in an effort to drive installation of the advertised application. The brand is charged a fixed or bid rate only when the application is installed.

Go Out and Find Your Users!

In addition to mobile advertising, brands have the ability to drive awareness and installations through the more traditional methods of print, radio and outdoor advertising. Mobile users are sophisticated and driven to have “the next great app.” Effectively generating awareness of your app can lead to users search for, find and install it.

How you drive that awareness is up to you—but performance-based advertising ensures that you’re not in it alone.

For more user acquisition tips and tricks, download our eBook, App Marketing 101: 12 Ways to Help Users Discover Your Mobile App.

Download eBook Here