Metrics & KPIs
CPI
By the AdFlint research team · Last reviewed July 2026
Ad spend divided by app installs, the average cost of one install attributed to your advertising by the store or measurement partner.
It prices the download and nothing after it. Installs are the cheapest event in a mobile funnel, so campaigns optimized toward this metric reliably find people who install once and never open the app again. Attribution is also contested between networks and SDKs. The common misreading is judging campaigns on it when retention and post-install revenue say the opposite.
CPI compared with
The settings this gets confused with, and how to tell them apart.
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