The agony of the costs of mobile user acquisition.
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Mobile app developers get whipsawed by rising marketing costs in April

Oh, the agony of mobile marketing costs. App marketing costs rose in April as mobile app developers poured more money into acquiring new users on mobile devices, according to a report by mobile marketing firm Fiksu.

That will lead to more fretting over the rising cost of user acquisition, which takes its toll on free-to-play game and app developers because marketing costs are outstripping app revenues. But if you look at the chart below, you’ll see that mobile app costs are bouncing all over the place. The general trend is up, but there are some slower months where the marketing costs can drop.

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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.