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User acquisition costs hit all-time highs in December

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 3 min

The costs of acquiring new users for mobile apps reached an all-time high in December as well-heeled companies scrambled for mobile market share over the holidays, according to a report by mobile marketing firm Fiksu.

The Fiksu Index published today shows that the cost to acquire a loyal user (one who opens an app three times or more) was $4.23 in December, up 19 percent from November and up 101 percent from December 2014. The all-time record beat out the previous record of $4.14 in September.

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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.