If you work in the mobile app marketing field, you have definitely heard about app install campaigns and CPI app campaigns. As the name suggests, an app install campaign serves the specific goal to acquire new users who download and install your app. It is possible to run this kind of app install campaigns on social media such as Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat, but also on Google and with programmatic platforms like DSPs (Demand Side Platforms). CPI instead refers to a specific pricing model for app install campaigns and it stands for Cost-Per-Install. Thus, when running CPI app campaigns, advertisers pay a fixed or variable price for each install generated by the campaign. Google and Facebook platforms for app install campaigns allow you to choose a CPI payout model and to set a budget, but the CPI then is variable and depends on the campaign performance. However, there are also DSPs which work with a fixed CPI right from the start.
Choosing a CPI pricing model provides several benefits for advertisers and here we list three main aspects that we believe are major reasons for including CPI app campaigns in your app user acquisition strategy.
Grow your app user base
The first advantage of running CPI app campaigns is pretty obvious and it refers to the primary goal of the app install campaign. Indeed, CPI app campaigns first of all help app developers to significantly grow their app user base. Compared to other marketing and advertising activities, CPI app campaigns are specifically designed to acquire new users for your app and that’s why they should be included in the app user acquisition strategy. Positive results in CPI app campaigns can also lead to a boost in organic acquisitions and help increase your brand awareness.
Pay only for new users and not for media buying
The second benefit of choosing CPI as pricing model for your app install campaigns is that it is less risky than other common pricing methods frequently used in online advertising such as CPM (Cost-Per-Mille/Thousands) and CPC (Cost-Per-Click). In CPI app campaigns advertisers will pay only for installs and thus, for new users for their app, while CPM and CPC are pricing models which make advertisers pay for traffic and media buying. Therefore, with CPM and CPC the risk is against advertisers, who pay for people seeing or clicking their ads but not necessarily downloading the app and thus generating a concrete result for their app user acquisition strategy.
Optimize towards post-install events
Last but not least, CPI app campaigns can improve the overall app user acquisition strategy by keeping track of post-install events which take place down the user funnel inside the app. By collecting data and insights about these in-app events, it is possible to optimize the campaign performance towards those relevant actions. In particular, DSPs which run programmatic advertising can optimize the performance of CPI app campaigns in order to acquire high-quality users, who carry out the post-install events more aligned with the app business KPIs. Advertisers can keep paying for installs while also increasing the number of post-install events which drive revenue for them, making the app user acquisition strategy more effective.
