eCPI

eCPI is a marketing metric that reveals your “effective Cost per Install,” or how much it costs to get a new user to install an app. eCPI is closely related to CPI (cost per install), although it takes into account organic variances in mobile marketing, including the viral component of adding a new user to the app. In particular, for each new app install, there is a viral effect that can drive additional installs. This viral component is denoted as the K factor, or the viral coefficient.

eCPI is calculated as follows:

eCPI = CPI / K

For example, if the cost per install is $10 and out of every 10 new users, one of them tells a friend and gets them to install the app, the eCPI would be 10 / 1.1 or $9.09. By including this viral coefficient in the effective cost per install equation, the goal is to get a more complete picture of the true customer acquisition cost of a new install.

While in reality there is typically an organic multiplier to paid marketing over time, eCPI or effective cost per install is typically only calculated with relatively immediate benefits. Related metrics include cost per engagement (CPE), cost per loyal user, cost per action (CPA), and cost per sale.

The main reason to use eCPI instead of just the traditional cost per install metric is that marketers know that a viral component can completely change the real world acquisition costs of new app installs. As we saw above, if the app has a positive viral coefficient this reduces the effective app install cost.

While K is extremely useful for calculating the eCPI, it’s important to note that it can be quite difficult to track in practice without the right tools in place. Another way to get the eCPI is to use a simpler equation:

eCPI = total ad spend / total installs

As you can see from this equation, eCPI takes into account installs that come from other channels such as organic or direct traffic to provide a more complete picture of customer acquisition costs. By having an accurate picture of an app’s eCPI, marketers can then allocate marketing budgets more efficiently to meet their business and revenue targets.

As a leading mobile measurement partner (MMP), Singular helps app businesses accurately measure their marketing performance, including tracking metrics such as eCPI. Specifically, Singular offers several solutions to help app marketers improve the return on their marketing, including:

• Marketing analytics: Singular provides granular marketing analytics and ROI insights into metrics such as eCPI so that you can allocate budgets more efficiently.
• Mobile attribution: Singular also provides mobile attribution so you can accurately measure the impact of your marketing efforts.
• Cost aggregation: Singular also enables marketers to track metrics like eCPMI by aggregating all costs across various platforms to get a true picture of your marketing spend.

In summary, Singular helps marketers analyze the impact of the marketing spend by automatically collecting, aggregating, and attributing cost data from various sources so that you can easily measure metrics like eCPM. With this data in hand, this provides marketers the tools they need to scale their app business by improving the ROI of their marketing efforts.