A lot of mobile companies are profiting these days from free-to-play games, but what’s really the measure in terms of what it costs to earn a loyal user for a game Fiksu recently measured these numbers in its latest report, explaining the Cost per Loyal User Index for the month of April.

As defined by Fiksu, the Cost per Loyal User Index measures the cost of acquiring a loyal user for brands that actively markets their apps. For the purpose of the Index, loyal users are defined as people who open an app three times or more.

According to its latest report, the CPLU Index managed to drop down to $2.74 cents in April, which was an 11 percent decrease from the previous month (which had reached a high of over $3) but still showed a whopping 80 percent rise year-over-year.

Meanwhile, the team also broke down the App Store Competitive Index, which breaks down the aggregate volume of downloads per day achieved by the top 200 ranked free iPhone apps in the United States. According to Fiksu, this number held steady for the month of April, with 8.1 million daily downloads. Although this is a drop from the previous number of 10.3 million back in January, it’s still very steady.

The next agenda on Fiksu’s report was the Cost Per Install, which measures the cost per app install directly attributed to advertising. For iOS, the number rose to $2.13 — a 39 percent increase over the previous month, and 54 percent rise year-over-year. Meanwhile, Android also showed an increase of its own, up to $2.08 for April, over 30 cents past March’s numbers. That also marks a 59 percent increase year-over-year.

Next up is Cost per App Launch, tracking the cost of each repeat app launch over time, focusing on engagement and lifetime value of mobile users. The Android index rose ten cents to $.34 from the previous month, a 169 percent increase from last year. As for iOS, it also rose 34 percent to $.41, a 75 percent increase from last year.

To conclude the report, Fiksu had a simple message for marketers: “While April represented another expensive month for mobile, it’s also an example of the heightened focus on strategic mobile spending by leading brands. As advertisers employ higher-value targeting and more precise audience segmentation data, the loyalty rates of app users will improve.

It continued, “In the coming months, marketers and advertisers should aim to employ higher-value sources, such as Facebook and video ads, which cost more on a per-install basis but lead to higher-quality results. As demonstrated this month, the cost per install (CPI) and the cost to acquire a loyal user (CPLU) will move closer together as targeting capabilities continue to improve, and each install is more likely to become a loyal user. In addition, marketers should focus on retargeting as a way to retain users and covert them into loyal users.”

Interested marketers can find the full report here.