Marketing costs rose in the ugly month of August.
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User acquisition costs go up, up, and away in August

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

User acquisition costs are on the rise again — as we recently predicted — this time cracking a significant milestone in the month of August. That’s going to spell bad news for small app makers who are trying so hard to get noticed among a sea of bigger competitors.

Mobile marketing firm Fiksu reported that the cost per loyal user index (which measures the cost to acquire users who open an app three or more times) rose to $4.04 in August, surpassing $4 for the first time for August. The figure is up 36 percent since last month and up 117 percent from a year ago.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.