42 Mobile App Marketing Statistics, Benchmarks, and Data Points for 2026

This research brief compiles verified mobile app marketing statistics covering downloads, install ad spend, cost per install, retention and churn, in-app engagement, app store optimization (ASO), and app store economics. Every number is attributed to a named publisher and year. Where a figure comes from a measurement vendor’s own network panel rather than a full-population census, we flag the limitation directly, because most app marketing data is panel-estimated and not audited.

Executive Summary

• Global consumer spending on non-game apps surpassed gaming spend for the first time in 2025, with total app consumer spend reaching about $85 billion, up 21% year over year (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026, reported January 2026).
• Global consumer spending on mobile apps hit roughly $171 billion in 2023, up about 4% year over year, across the combined App Store and Google Play (Source: data.ai / Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2024).
• Global app downloads were roughly flat at about 257 billion in 2023 (Source: data.ai, State of Mobile 2024).
• Global app user acquisition ad spend rose about 5% in 2024 to roughly $65 billion (Source: AppsFlyer, 2024, vendor-network estimate).
• The average cost per install (CPI) on iOS is roughly three times higher than on Android, approximately $3.60 versus $1.20 in AppsFlyer benchmark data (Source: AppsFlyer benchmarks, vendor-network estimate).
• Average day-30 retention across consumer apps sits near 6%, meaning roughly 94% of installed users stop using an app within a month (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024, panel-estimated).
• App store search drives about 65% of app discovery on iOS and about 58% on Google Play, making keyword discoverability the single largest organic acquisition lever (Source: AppTweak / ASO industry benchmarks, 2026).
• Apple and Google both cut their standard 30% commission to 15% for developers earning under $1 million in annual proceeds, materially changing app unit economics for small publishers (Source: Apple App Store Small Business Program; Google Play, 2021 onward).

Key Findings

• Total global consumer spend on apps reached about $85 billion in 2025, a 21% year-over-year increase and roughly 2.8 times the level of five years prior (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026, January 2026).
• 2025 was the first year globally that non-game app consumer spend exceeded gaming revenue (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026).
• AI app in-app purchase revenue reached about $5 billion in 2025, more than tripling year over year, with AI app downloads near 3.8 billion (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026).
• ChatGPT alone generated about $3.4 billion in mobile revenue in 2025 (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026).
• Global consumer app spend was about $171 billion in 2023, up about 4% after a 2% decline in 2022 (Source: data.ai / Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2024).
• Global app downloads were about 257 billion in 2023, effectively flat year over year (Source: data.ai, State of Mobile 2024).
• Across the top 10 markets, weighted-average time spent on mobile surpassed 5 hours per day in 2023, up about 2% year over year (Source: data.ai / Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2024).
• Global app install ad spend was about $65 billion in 2024, up about 5% after a roughly 6% decline in 2023 (Source: AppsFlyer, 2024, vendor-network estimate).
• AppsFlyer forecast global app install ad spend near $94.9 billion for 2025 (Source: AppsFlyer, 2023 projection, vendor forecast).
• Global remarketing spend on paid channels reached about $31.3 billion in 2025, up about 37% year over year, growing far faster than user acquisition (Source: AppsFlyer, 2025, vendor-network estimate).
• Average CPI is roughly $1.20 on Android versus roughly $3.60 on iOS in AppsFlyer benchmark data (Source: AppsFlyer benchmarks, vendor-network estimate).
• Average day-1 app retention across consumer apps is roughly 25%, falling to about 11% to 13% by day 7 and roughly 6% by day 30 (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024, panel-estimated).
• App store search accounts for about 65% of iOS app discovery and about 58% of Google Play discovery (Source: AppTweak / ASO benchmarks, 2026).
• The Google Play Store listed about 1.68 million Android apps in June 2024, while the Apple App Store listed about 1.54 million apps in Q2 2024 (Source: Statista, 2024).
• Global in-app purchase revenue across iOS and Google Play reached about $39.4 billion in Q4 2024, up about 13.5% year over year (Source: Sensor Tower, Q4 2024 Digital Market Index).

Market Size and Consumer Spend

The app economy has recovered from its 2022 dip and returned to record spending, now led by non-game apps and AI. Figures below combine App Store and Google Play unless noted.

Global consumer app spend reached about $171 billion in 2023, up about 4% year over year (Source: data.ai / Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2024). Total app consumer spend then reached about $85 billion in 2025 by Sensor Tower’s revised methodology, up 21% year over year (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026, January 2026). These two figures are not directly comparable because Sensor Tower restated its panel and scope between the 2024 and 2026 reports, so treat the trend, not the absolute delta, as reliable. Global in-app purchase revenue across both stores was about $39.4 billion in Q4 2024 alone, up about 13.5% year over year (Source: Sensor Tower, Q4 2024 Digital Market Index). What this means: consumer willingness to pay inside apps is rising even as download volume plateaus, so monetization now matters more than raw install counts.

App Install Ad Spend and Marketing Budgets

App install advertising is the core paid-acquisition channel, and its budget cycle tracks the broader ad economy. All figures in this section are AppsFlyer network estimates, not audited industry totals.

Global app install ad spend was about $65 billion in 2024, up about 5% (Source: AppsFlyer, 2024). This followed a roughly 6% decline in 2023 during the ad-market downturn (Source: AppsFlyer, 2023). AppsFlyer projected global app install ad spend near $94.9 billion for 2025 (Source: AppsFlyer, 2023 forecast). Remarketing is the fastest-growing budget line: global remarketing spend on paid channels reached about $31.3 billion in 2025, up about 37% year over year (Source: AppsFlyer, 2025). What this means: budgets are shifting from acquiring new users toward re-engaging existing ones, a direct response to rising install costs and privacy-driven attribution loss. Limitation: AppsFlyer measures the apps that use its SDK, so these totals reflect a large but non-exhaustive slice of the market.

Cost Per Install and Acquisition Costs

Install cost is the single most-watched app marketing metric, and it varies sharply by platform, category, and geography.

Average CPI is roughly $1.20 on Android versus roughly $3.60 on iOS in AppsFlyer benchmark data (Source: AppsFlyer benchmarks). The platform gap is consistent across categories: puzzle games in Japan run about $1.77 on Android versus about $3.69 on iOS, and action games run about $2.01 on Android versus about $3.96 on iOS in the same benchmark set (Source: AppsFlyer benchmarks). What this means: iOS users cost more to acquire but tend to spend more per user, so blended CPI targets must be set per platform, not globally. Limitation: CPI benchmarks are averages across an SDK panel and swing widely with auction competition, seasonality, and creative quality, so they are directional planning inputs rather than fixed rate cards.

All CPI values above are AppsFlyer vendor-network benchmark estimates and are approximate.

Retention and Churn

Retention is where most acquisition budget is won or lost, because the steepest user loss happens in the first week after install.

Average day-1 retention across consumer apps is roughly 25%, meaning about three of four users do not return the day after installing (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024). Day-7 retention falls to about 11% to 13%, and day-30 retention sits near 6%, so roughly 94% of installed users churn within a month (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024). Retention varies by category: fintech apps show day-30 retention closer to 11% to 12%, while many health and fitness apps fall to about 3% by day 30 (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024). What this means: because day-30 retention is roughly one-fifth of day-1 retention, improving first-session onboarding compounds more than buying additional installs. Limitation: retention benchmarks are pooled from measurement-vendor panels and definitions of an active user differ across providers, so cross-source comparisons are imprecise.

Retention figures above are panel-estimated ranges, not census data, and should be read as directional.

In-App Engagement

Engagement metrics show that even where downloads are flat, time spent inside apps continues to climb, driven heavily by AI apps.

Across the top 10 markets, weighted-average daily time on mobile passed 5 hours in 2023, up about 2% year over year (Source: data.ai / Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2024). Time spent in generative AI apps reached about 48 billion hours in 2025, roughly 3.6 times the 2024 level and about 10 times the 2023 level, across about 1 trillion sessions (Source: Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026). Adjust’s vertical data showed e-commerce app installs up about 25% year over year in the first half of 2024 with sessions up about 13% (Source: Adjust, Shopping Apps data, 2024). What this means: engagement is concentrating in a few high-frequency categories, so marketers competing for attention outside AI and social face a shrinking share of daily minutes. Limitation: session and time-spent figures are SDK-panel and device-panel estimates that vary by measurement methodology.

App Store Optimization (ASO)

ASO governs organic discovery, which remains the largest single acquisition channel on both stores and does not carry a media cost.

App store search drives about 65% of app discovery on iOS and about 58% on Google Play (Source: AppTweak / ASO benchmarks, 2026). On iOS, search sits ahead of browse (about 18%), referrer traffic (about 12%), and ads (about 5%) as an install source (Source: AppTweak / ASO benchmarks, 2026). The two leading stores together list more than 4 million apps, with about 1.68 million on Google Play in June 2024 and about 1.54 million on the Apple App Store in Q2 2024 (Source: Statista, 2024). What this means: with millions of competing listings and a majority of installs coming from search, keyword relevance in the app title and metadata is the highest-leverage organic lever. Limitation: discovery-source splits come from store-provided attribution and vendor analysis, and Apple and Google define discovery categories differently.

App Store Economics

Platform commissions determine how much of every dollar of app revenue a publisher keeps, and both stores have tiered their fees.

The standard commission on both the Apple App Store and Google Play is 30% (Source: Apple; Google Play). Apple’s App Store Small Business Program, launched in 2021, cuts that to 15% on the first $1 million in annual proceeds for developers who earned under $1 million in the prior calendar year (Source: Apple App Store Small Business Program). Google Play applies a 15% rate on the first $1 million in annual earnings and a 15% rate from day one on auto-renewing subscriptions (Source: Google Play). What this means: for a publisher under the $1 million threshold, the reduced rate can be the difference between a viable and unviable margin, so LTV and payback models must use the correct commission tier. Limitation: commission terms have shifted under regulatory and legal pressure in the EU, US, and elsewhere, so the applicable rate depends on jurisdiction and enrollment status at the time of sale.

Original Synthesis

These derived insights combine the public figures above. Each states its formula, inputs, and limits, and none should be read as precise.

First, the iOS install-cost premium. Dividing the AppsFlyer average iOS CPI (about $3.60) by the average Android CPI (about $1.20) gives a roughly 3.0x iOS premium. Inputs: AppsFlyer CPI benchmarks. Limitation: both figures are network averages, so the ratio describes central tendency, not any specific campaign, and it ignores the higher post-install spend typical of iOS users.

Second, an install-to-retained-user cost multiplier. If day-30 retention averages about 6%, then the effective cost of one user still active at day 30 is roughly the CPI divided by 0.06, about 16.7 times CPI. At the Android average CPI of $1.20, that implies roughly $20 to hold one active day-30 Android user; at the iOS average of $3.60, roughly $60. Inputs: AppsFlyer CPI benchmarks and aggregated 2024 retention benchmarks. Limitation: this multiplies two panel averages from different sources, so it is an order-of-magnitude planning figure, not a measured cost.

Third, the organic-versus-paid discovery balance on iOS. With search at about 65% and ads at about 5% of iOS discovery, organic search delivers roughly 13 times the install share of paid ads on that platform before any media spend. Inputs: AppTweak / ASO benchmarks, 2026. Limitation: share of discovery is not share of revenue, and paid installs may skew toward higher-value users, so the 13x ratio measures volume, not value.

Charts to build

• Title: iOS versus Android CPI by category. Data needed: AppsFlyer CPI benchmarks per category and platform. Source: AppsFlyer. Insight: the iOS premium is consistent across genres. Citation-worthy because it quantifies a planning constant marketers repeatedly ask about.
• Title: The retention cliff, day 1 to day 30. Data needed: average day-1, day-7, day-30 retention across categories. Source: aggregated 2024 vendor benchmarks. Insight: most loss happens in week one. Citation-worthy because it reframes budget toward onboarding.
• Title: App install ad spend, 2021 to 2025. Data needed: annual global install ad spend and YoY change. Source: AppsFlyer. Insight: recovery after the 2022-2023 dip. Citation-worthy as a market-cycle marker.
• Title: iOS discovery source mix. Data needed: search, browse, referrer, ads shares. Source: AppTweak / ASO benchmarks. Insight: search dominates. Citation-worthy for ASO budget justification.
• Title: Consumer app spend, apps versus games crossover. Data needed: annual non-game versus game consumer spend. Source: Sensor Tower State of Mobile. Insight: 2025 crossover year. Citation-worthy as a structural shift.

Methodology

Sources were selected for verifiability and proximity to the underlying measurement. Primary market-research reports (Sensor Tower / data.ai State of Mobile, AppsFlyer, Adjust) and Statista aggregations were preferred, with each figure traced to a named publisher and year. We excluded any statistic we could not attribute to a specific named source. Where two sources disagreed, for example the 2023 versus 2025 total-spend figures across restated Sensor Tower reports, we presented both and flagged that methodology changes make the absolute figures non-comparable. Derived estimates in Original Synthesis are simple arithmetic on cited inputs and are labeled as order-of-magnitude. Most app marketing data originates from measurement vendors’ SDK or device panels rather than a full-population census, so figures are estimates with real but unquantified error bars. Last updated July 2026.

Source Quality

Tier 1 (primary / official bodies): Apple App Store program terms and Google Play program terms for commission structure. Tier 2 (credible market research and public-company data): Sensor Tower / data.ai State of Mobile, AppsFlyer benchmarks and forecasts, Adjust benchmarks, AppTweak ASO benchmarks, and Statista aggregations. Tier 3 (reputable journalism): TechCrunch and Marketing Dive coverage used only to locate and cross-check Tier 2 figures, never as the primary number. No Tier 3 figure is presented without a Tier 2 origin.

Most Quotable Statistics

• 2025 was the first year global non-game app spend beat gaming revenue (Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026).
• iOS installs cost roughly three times Android installs, about $3.60 versus $1.20 (AppsFlyer benchmarks).
• About 94% of installed users churn within 30 days (aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024).
• About 65% of iOS app discovery comes from store search (AppTweak / ASO benchmarks, 2026).
• Global app install ad spend was about $65 billion in 2024, up about 5% (AppsFlyer, 2024).

Data Limitations

• Most figures are vendor SDK-panel or device-panel estimates, not audited full-market totals.
• Sensor Tower restated methodology between State of Mobile 2024 and 2026, so total-spend figures across years are not directly comparable.
• CPI and retention benchmarks are averages that swing with category, geography, season, and auction dynamics.
• Commission rates are subject to ongoing regulatory and legal change and vary by jurisdiction.
• Discovery-source splits rely on store-provided attribution with store-specific category definitions.

Recommended Dataset Fields

For a downloadable CSV, we recommend these columns: metric_name, value, unit, platform (iOS / Android / combined), category, geography, period_year, period_granularity (annual / quarterly / half), publisher, report_name, source_url, data_type (census / panel-estimate / forecast), and notes_or_limitations.

Press Summary

Mobile app marketing entered 2026 in recovery and restructuring at once. Global consumer app spend reached about $85 billion in 2025, up 21% year over year, and for the first time non-game apps outspent games, driven by AI apps whose in-app purchase revenue tripled to about $5 billion (Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2026). On the paid side, global app install ad spend was about $65 billion in 2024, up about 5%, while remarketing budgets grew far faster, reaching about $31.3 billion in 2025 (AppsFlyer). Acquisition costs remain platform-split: iOS installs run about $3.60 versus about $1.20 on Android (AppsFlyer benchmarks). Retention stays the binding constraint, with roughly 94% of installed users gone within 30 days (aggregated 2024 benchmarks). Organic discovery still leads, with about 65% of iOS installs starting in store search (AppTweak). All figures are publisher-attributed and most are panel estimates rather than audited totals.

Suggested Headlines

• Apps Beat Games: The 2025 Spending Crossover in Five Numbers
• Why an iOS Install Costs Three Times an Android One
• The 30-Day Cliff: What App Retention Data Really Shows
• Search Still Wins: 65% of iOS Installs Start in the App Store
• $65 Billion and Rising: The State of App Install Advertising

FAQ

How much do consumers spend on apps each year?

Global consumer app spend was about $171 billion in 2023 and about $85 billion in 2025 under Sensor Tower’s restated methodology, up 21% year over year (Source: data.ai / Sensor Tower, State of Mobile 2024 and 2026). The figures are not directly comparable because of a methodology change.

What is the average cost per install?

Roughly $1.20 on Android and about $3.60 on iOS in AppsFlyer benchmark data (Source: AppsFlyer benchmarks, vendor-network estimate).

How much is spent on app install advertising globally?

About $65 billion in 2024, up about 5% year over year, with a forecast near $94.9 billion for 2025 (Source: AppsFlyer, 2024 and 2023 forecast).

What is a normal app retention rate?

About 25% at day 1 and roughly 6% at day 30 across consumer apps (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024, panel-estimated).

How much app churn happens in the first month?

Roughly 94% of installed users stop using an app within 30 days on average (Source: aggregated vendor benchmarks, 2024).

How many installs come from app store search?

About 65% of iOS discovery and about 58% of Google Play discovery come from store search (Source: AppTweak / ASO benchmarks, 2026).

How many apps are in the app stores?

About 1.68 million on Google Play in June 2024 and about 1.54 million on the Apple App Store in Q2 2024 (Source: Statista, 2024).

What commission do the app stores charge?

A standard 30%, reduced to 15% on the first $1 million in annual proceeds or earnings for qualifying small developers on both stores (Source: Apple App Store Small Business Program; Google Play).

Is remarketing spend growing faster than acquisition?

Yes; global remarketing spend reached about $31.3 billion in 2025, up about 37% year over year, far outpacing user-acquisition growth (Source: AppsFlyer, 2025).

How much time do people spend in apps?

Weighted-average daily mobile time passed 5 hours across the top 10 markets in 2023, and generative AI apps alone drew about 48 billion hours in 2025 (Source: data.ai State of Mobile 2024; Sensor Tower State of Mobile 2026).

About this research

This brief was compiled by CO Consulting, a research-driven growth-consulting firm, and pairs with our deeper reference on mobile marketing statistics. If your team needs these benchmarks mapped to your own funnel, you can book a consultation.

Related research

• Email Marketing Benchmarks
• SMS Marketing
• Mobile Marketing
• Live Chat & Conversational
• Webinar Statistics