Cost per install (CPI) is a type of CPA model. It implies charging for an instance when a mobile app copy is installed on a smartphone or tablet computer. To calculate the cost per install total, expenditure on ads to drive app installs should be divided over a total number of installs that were generated with those ads. Currently, the average cost per install is roughly $1.24 / per install.
Among all payment models established in mobile advertising, this is one of the most important for app developers, because it allows them to calculate ROI of their investments in-app advertising. In this directory, we’ve curated all the best CPI Advertising Networks for you.
CPI formula
Source: The Online Advertising Guide
CPI Benefits
CPI is a model that is largely specific to mobile applications. Primarily, a brand is charged a fixed rate only when the user installs the app. A key benefit of this model is that advertisers can target an app niche’s audience.
For app developers looking to create a quick and reliable buzz around their new app, CPI campaigns are often a great way of achieving fast results for them.
One potential drawback of CPI marketing is that you don’t know how many people are using your mobile app. Just because they installed the app doesn’t always mean they are going to spend money on additional purchases or even stick around for long.
Other benefits include:
- You only pay for results with the CPI model
- App developers will be able to gain visibility on the app stores
CPI Rates
Here are some CPI offers along with their platform and country in the table below.
| Platform/Network | Country | CPI Rates |
| Facebook Ads | US | $1.8 |
| Twitter Ads | US | $2.53 |
| Instagram Ads | US | $2.23 |
| Search Ads | US | $1 |
| Average iOS App | US | $2.07 |
Source: Business of Apps
Below we’ve listed the best CPI ad networks and platforms so you can get up and running without a problem.
List of cost per install (CPI) ad networks and traffic sources
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 400 | $192m+ | 25k | 4m+ |
AdColony (formerly known as Opera Mediaworks) is one of the largest mobile ad networks globally. Its reach, 1,4 billion users globally, what sets it apart from other ad networks. Known for its unparalleled 3rd party verified viewability rates, exclusive Instant-Play™ HD video technology, proprietary rich media formats, its global performance advertising business and programmatic marketplace, and the company extensive SDK footprint in the Top 1,000 apps worldwide. A fully-owned subsidiary of Otello Corporation ASA, AdColony is a global organization with over 20 offices worldwide.
- Mobile platforms: Android, IOS
- Campaign types: CPM
- Ad formats supported: Rich Media, Video
- Targeting: Demographic
- Key markets: US
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 51-200 | - | - | - |
Zoomd is dedicated to helping advertisers and publishers achieve their key performance indicators (KPIs) through a patented, performance-based advertising platform. The Company’s User Acquisition platform unifies more than 600 media sources under one dashboard including Google, TikTok, Samsung premium inventory and much more.
- Business Models – Choose your preferred business model CPC/CPI/CPO/CPE/CPA
- Fraud – Detection as part of the platform, adding you an extra layer of safety
- Measurement – integrated to all major 3rd party mobile measurement solutions
- Cost-efficiency – Save countless resources by managing all campaigns under one screen
- Data Play – Enjoy machine decisions based on more than 500Million data points a day
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | - | - | 20k | - |
Headway is a leading data-driven app growth marketing company servicing mobile apps, brands, and ad-tech companies worldwide. Headway’s mobile-first DSP, Smadex, integrates with partner platforms to offer brands seamless data-driven digital solutions. Headway provides optimized and targeted ad campaigns, empowered by Machine Learning, and guided by experienced growth experts. Headway is a business unit of Entravision Communications Corporation (NYSE: EVC), a diversified global media, data and technology services company.
- Mobile platforms: Android, IOS
- Campaign types: CPA, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Content Lock, Interstitial, Native, Video
- Targeting: Custom
- Key Markets: Europe, Latin America, Middle East, South East Asia, USA
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 500-1000 | +100M$ | 1.5k+ | 2.5m+ |
Smadex is the mobile-first programmatic DSP engineered for growth.
We are a technology company led by engineering and data science, focused on uprising the global mobile programmatic landscape through our ad tech solutions.
Using a combination of our own programmatic advertising technology, machine learning, and first-party data, we have over a decade partnering with apps, brands and performance marketers to achieve their growth goals.
We take transparency very seriously. To guarantee our fully transparent platform remains that way, Smadex programmatic partners with the leading third-party platforms to provide innovative solutions and independent measurement at the very core of our service.
Learn more about Smadex
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 10-50 | - | - | - |
Hitapps focuses on your success as a whole. Perhaps you can manage a small-scale campaign but, if you want to develop an impactful ads campaign, it’s better to let us take over.
- Advertising agency
- RTB solution
- Social advertising
- Apps publishing
FraudScore is an independent antifraud solution that evaluates the quality of mobile and web traffic in advertising campaigns. FraudScore clients are direct advertisers and ad agencies, ad networks & mobile developers from all over the world. FraudScore offers antifraud solutions for all steps of ad campaign funnel: from DSPs, to CPI, CPM, CPA and CPC. FraudScore is well known to be effective in combat against click spamming, bot, malware and adware, click injection, bot farms and many more.
| Employees | Social | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2-10 | 100 |
Adsperfection is an ad tech company that helps brands and developers with users acquisition and in-app monetization. With Adsperfection advertisers can acquire engaged and paying users for their app/product/service, as well as buy media at scale and get advanced solutions for preventing fraud. Publishers can boost their eCPM with flexible ad formats, use high impact monetization solutions and arrange direct deals from most recognizable app developers worldwide.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPA, CPC, CPI, CPL, CPM, CPS
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Interstitial, Native, Video
- Targeting: Custom
- Key Markets: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Spain, UK, USA
myAppFree
High Quality Mobile Traffic & Exclusive Placements on SONY Xperia, Native SDK
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | 2-10 | $8.9m+ | 7k | 1.36m+ |
myAppFree is a performance-based advertising platform, founded in 2015 in Italy by Massimo Caroli and Riccardo Fuzzi, that matches advertisers and publishers. One of the unique features it offers in terms of inventory for advertisers is an access to 40 million plus Sony Xperia smartphone users, as well as own App Discovery that features the best mobile apps for users to discover.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS, Windows Phone
- Campaign types: CPA, CPC, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Interstitial, Native, Notifications
- Targeting: Audience, Geo, Interests, OS, Platform
- Key Markets: Asia, Europe, Latin America, USA
Zucks is a Japan-based mobile advertising platform strong in the Asian mobile market. They offer a large number of campaigns supporting iOS and Android, driving app downloads as well as CPI,CPA and CPC. It reaches over 10000 users each on Android and iOS. and can deliver both incentivized and non-incentivized ads.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS, HTML5
- Campaign types: CPA, CPC, CPI, CPM, CPV
- Ad formats supported: App Icon, Banners, Interstitial, Native, Offer Wall, Rewards, Rich Media, Video
- Targeting: Audience, Behavioral, Carrier, Channel, Content, Country, Custom, Demographic, Device, Language, OS, Platform
- Key Markets: Global
Startapp is a mobile advertising company. It provides a self-serve platform for advertisers to quickly build and launch ad campaigns, controlling audience, creatives and budget aspects of their campaigns. Among features that sets it aside from other ad networks are uniquely designed animated and interactive ads, data-enhanced targeting, using data derived from over 300,000 mobile apps and native ad units.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS
- Campaign types: CPA, CPC, CPI, CPM
- Ad formats supported: App Icon, Full Page Ads, InApp Ads, Interstitial, Video
- Targeting: App, Carrier, Competitors, Connection Type, Device, Gender, Geo, OS
- Key Markets: Global
SmartyAds is cutting-edge programmatic advertising platform tailored to the needs of supply and demand partners, data management platforms, ad networks, and agency trading desks. SmartyAds technology allows to create, launch, manage, and analyze digital ad campaigns in the most convenient way.
Learn more about SmartyAds
Mobile ad planning, execution and analysis are complicated for startups because they cannot reach all available app marketing tools. App Samurai makes it easy for them without requiring in-depth mobile advertising knowledge! Thanks to App Samurai, you can easily create, manage, and measure acquisition campaigns, boost campaigns, and video campaigns to acquire qualified users.
Learn more about App Samurai
Propeller Ads is an online advertising company, founded in 2011. It maintains one of the biggest ad networks on the market, with over 1B daily advertising impressions across the globe. PropellerAds has more than 150,000 premium publishers’ sites registered in the network. In addition, PropellerAds offers such solutions as: performance based marketing for agencies & CPA networks, mobile app monetization with SDK integration, buying traffic via Real-Time Bidding model and more.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPM, CPA, CPL, CPC
- Ad formats supported: Push Notifications, Interstitials, Popunder, Native Ads
- Targeting: Language, OS, GEO, 3g/WiFi, Device type, Browser, Mobile Carrier, Day & time, User Activity (new)
- Key Markets: Global
| Founded | Employees | Social | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 11-50 | 5k |
Mobupps is are a performance-oriented ad network, with over 10 years of experience in mobile user acquisition. The network leverages an access to private media from over 4,500 direct app publishers, as well as direct integration to all of the major global traffic sources.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS,
- Campaign types: CPC, CPI, CPM
- Ad formats supported: App Icon, Audio, Banners, Content Lock, Coupons, Custom, In-App, Incentivized, Interstitial, Native, Notifications, Offer Wall, Pop up, PopUnder, Redirect, Rewarded Video, Rewards, Rich Media, Search, Social, Text, Video
- Targeting: App, Carrier, Category, Country, Demographic, Device, Network, White & Black Lists
- Key markets: Global
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 152 | $6m+ | 8k | 90,000+ |
Leadbolt is a high performance mobile advertising platform for user acquisition and in-app monetization. The company is focused on helping mobile advertisers to reach and acquire loyal users at scale, leveraging its direct relationships and dynamic ad-serving technologies. Leadbolt’s AI and Machine Learning based algorithms assist advertisers with advanced targeting that captivates best-fit audiences to achieve deeper user engagement with maximum ROI.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Windows Phone
- Campaign types: CPC, CPM, CPI, CPV
- Ad formats supported: Native, Video, Interstitial
- Targeting: country, region, carrier, connection type, mobile platform, OS version, device, category
- Key Markets: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Global, India, Russia, UK, USA
ironSource is the leading in-app video advertising platform. It is one of the biggest and oldest mobile advertising platforms launched in 2010. Focusing on mobile games, it makes free-to-play and free-to-use possible for over 1.5B people around the world. Over 80,000 app developers use its technologies to grow their businesses, among these such leading companies like Kongregate, Zeptolab, Big Fish Games, Zynga and Playrix.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Cocos, Amazon, AdobeAir
- Campaign types: CPC, CPE, CPA, CPV
- Ad formats supported: App Wall, Interstitial, Offer Wall, Video
- Targeting: Custom
- Key Markets: United States, Israel
Google Ads acts as Google’s mobile advertising network, based on combining the Google Adwords ad buying interface with Google traffic sources such as it’s own platforms and servers as well as the legendary Admob platform. Admob was founded in 2006 by Omar Hamoui and acquired by Google in 2009. They built one of the biggest ad networks on the planet, based on the value proposition a free ad generation tool to drive in-app installs and cross-promote apps. Google Ads proprietary IAP (in-app purchase) in-house ad format supply advertisers with app app users that, based on the platform’s data, will most likely to download / buy a particular mobile app. In July 2018 the platform was rebranded from AdMob to Google Ads.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Unity, Cocos
- Campaign types: CPM, CPC, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Native, Video, Interstitial
- Targeting: country, region, carrier, connection type, mobile platform, OS version, device, audience (user profile data)
- Key markets: global
Facebook Audience Network
Expand the power of Facebook advertising with Audience Network.
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2007 | 36,000 | 55,800m | 17m | 27,000+ |
Facebook Ads is the biggest digital advertising platform with a major focus on mobile ads. It features the best ad format, targeting and reporting capabilities in the industry. The platform allows mobile app advertisers to run ad campaigns on their choice on Facebook itself, its Messenger app, Instagram, Audience Network (to show ads across the web) and its app for businesses Workplace.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Web
- Campaign types: CPI, CPM
- Ad formats supported: banners, carousel banners, video, slideshow
- Targeting: age, gender, location, device, mobile OS, OS version, interests, mobile user language.
- Key markets: global
CPAlead
35 Million Installs Don't Lie - CPAlead delivers VALUE for App Owners & Mobile Affiliates
| Founded | Employees | Social | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 11-50 | 3k |
ConsoliAds Pte Ltd. is MENA and APAC’s mobile ad mediation and promotion platform. It provides advertisers with access to publishers inventory in more than 12,000 apps that deliver over 350 million ad impressions and helps to reach impression-to-install conversion up to 10%, the platform is capable to deliver CPI around $.0.40.
- Mobile platforms: Android, IOS, Mobile Web
- Campaign types: CPC, CPI, CPM
- Ad formats supported: Native, Video, Interstitial, Rewarded Video, Banner and Icon
- Targeting: Country, Demographic, Device, Geo, OS, Time
- Key Markets: CPC, CPI, CPM
Chartboost is an in-app monetization and programmatic advertising company, founded in 2011 by Sean Fannan and Maria Alegre in San Francisco, US. Chartboost mobile ad network provides advertisers with a platform for a cross-promotion with native ads, sophisticated targeting and tracking. Also the company provides mobile game owners with developer-t0-developer mobile ad marketplace to exchange ads inside their apps directly.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPC, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Content Lock, Interstitial, OfferWall, Video
- Targeting: Custom
- Key Markets: global, United States
Appnext is a mobile app discovery company with a platform that operates on a self-serve CPI bidding basis. It was founded in 2012 by Elad Nantason. Appnext’s ad solution features extensive database of 700 million mobile app users that get Appnext-powered app recommendations based on their habits and preferences. It operates in 180 countries, has a community of more than 30,000 developers, where any new advertiser can get to know fellow developers and get valuable hints for launching his own ad campaigns.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPI, CPC
- Ad formats supported: Interstitial, Native Ads, Notification, Rewarded videos, Actions
- Targeting: (City, State), Device, Direct Buy (advertise on specific app/ game), OS (platform and version targeting)
- Key Markets: Global
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 51-200 | - | 1k+ | 70,000+ |
Appness is a creative & media buying lab for mobile advertising that provides marketers with access to the human cloud: freelance ad designers and in-house advertising professionals powered by the platform’s intelligent ad optimization algorithms. The Appness platform was designed to eliminate the major problems encountered by advertisers in implementing ad campaigns and to support companies that lack expertise in user acquisition by streamlining and automating media buying processes. Headquartered in Cyprus, Appness currently works with 1,000+ ad designers from all around the world and employs 50+ qualified advertising experts.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS
- Campaign types: CPA, CPI, CPL, CPS
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Video
- Targeting: Custom
- Key Markets: Global
Apple Search Ads is the Apple Inc. iOS app promotion platform for app developers to drive traffic for their apps via search. The platform features two plans – Basic and Advanced, with the Basic plan, currently available only for US market, developers can set their app ad campaigns with a specific CPI they want to stick to and let it run automatically with minimal management on their part. The minimum budget for the Basic plan is $5,000 per app per month. The Advanced plan implies developers need to set up keywords they target and audiences they need to reach, set bids and budgets they plan to spend and pay only when mobile users tap on their ads.
- Mobile platforms: iOS
- Campaign types: CPI, CPC
- Ad formats supported: auto-generated ads with creatives an app has on the App Store.
- Targeting: iOS version, device (iPhone / iPad), location, gender, age, new / existing customers for other apps from the same advertiser
- Key markets: global, the Basic plan is US only.
AdTiming is a mobile marketing platform that is focused on using Big Data to run ads geo-targeted in 200+ countries. With AdTiming advertisers can choose from 20,000 tags to laser focus their mobile app ad campaign in time to reach a particular target audience.
- Mobile platforms: Android, IOS
- Campaign types: CPA, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Native, Rewarded Video
- Targeting: Device, Operator, OS
- Key Markets: Europe, India, Japan, Middle East, USA
Adsterra Network
Best Advertising Network, High Quality Traffic, Self-Service Platform for advertisers
unity Ads is the premier ad monetization solution for mobile games, it was launched by Unity Technologies in 2014. The mobile ad platform was designed to advertise mobile games and it’s catered to help game developers to monetize on their games more efficiently using video ads. Th unity Ads team is focused on delivering native video ads solution that allows game advertisers to get much more of game players making in-app purchases than industry standard 3% on average.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPM, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Banner, Video, Interstitial
- Targeting: device, connection, operating system, country
- Key Markets: United States
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 3,900 | 3,000m | 57m | 4,000+ |
Twitter Ads is the Twitter advertising platform that allows app marketers to drive traffic to their apps from both on Twitter and off Twitter channels. In terms of targeting options and reach its rivals are only Facebook and Google. Twitter ads support deep linking technology that allows app marketers to link an ad to a specific part of a mobile app content.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPI, CPC, CPM
- Ad formats supported: auto-generated ads with creatives an app has on the App Store.
- Targeting: mobile OS, OS version, device (iPhone / iPad), location, gender, age, mobile connection type
- Key markets: global
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 51-200 | - | 159 | - |
Tapjoy is an advertising and app monetization platform that offers a novel way for users to engage in mobile advertising.. The Tapjoy mobile ad network services lineup are focused on helping premium mobile app publishers to increase revenue on each user they have. Tapjoy offers users virtual currency for watching video ads, subscribing to services, and downloading promoted apps. Users can then spend that virtual currency on unlocking in-app content from publishers. The key benefit that the company brings to the table is that it allows app developers and brands monetize users who do not have credit cards or do not wish to spend real currency on app content.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS, Mobile Web
- Campaign types: CPC, CPD, CPI, CPM
- Ad formats supported: Content Lock, Interstitial, Offerwall, Rewards
- Targeting: custom
- Key Markets: Europe, India, Japan, Kenya, South Africa, UK, United States
| Founded | Employees | Social | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 100-125 | 12k+ |
| Founded | Employees | Social | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 11-50 | 2k+ |
Snapchat Ads is the Snap Inc. advertising platform that allows businesses to advertise on the platform with Snap’s unique ad formats and reach Millennials audience that has developed a high level of trust with the platform. Snapchat has 187 million daily active users that open the app 25 times a day on average and spend 30+ minutes with the app. Snap has partnered with multiple companies to better connect advertisers with snapchatters communities.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPI, CPC
- Ad formats supported: Snap Ads, Filters, Lenses
- Targeting: 300 audiences based on data derived from what content snapchatters watch, buy and post on the platform, demographics, lookalike audiences.
- Key markets: global, the Basic plan is US only.
| Founded | Employees | Revenues | Social | Traffic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | 100 | $3m+ | 19k | 50,000+ |
mobusi, part of Fibonad group, is a Technology Media Company with a mobile-first and performance mindset empowering both Advertisers and Publishers to reach and exceed their high demanding targets. The platform obtains over 5 million leads per month worldwide. We maximize revenue obtained by our media partners thanks to our global coverage and optimization algorithms. In House Technology, own DSP and advanced antifraud system, Monetization Solutions, exclusive offers and premium traffic. A Mediation platform.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android
- Campaign types: CPM, CPC, CPI, CPA
- Ad formats supported: Interstitial, Banner, Video
- Targeting: country, carrier, OS, device, browser, wifi / mobile connectivity
- Key Markets: Global
Liftoff is Cost-Per-Action optimized mobile user acquisition platform for app marketers. It provides CPI campaigns optimization via tracking post-install events for apps. It also provides retargeting features to bring mobile users back to a specific app and lookalike features to connect mobile apps with users similar to people who already use these apps.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Mobile Web
- Campaign types: CPI, CPA
- Ad formats supported: Custom
- Targeting: lookalike, retargeting,
- Key Markets: Global
Digital Turbine is a mobile app advertising platform for app delivery and discovery. The company is double down on a mobile native format to allow advertisers cut through the noice and reach out their target audience. Digital Turbine bypasses app stores and partners with major global telecom companies to introduce apps to mobile users with sponsored recommendations and native preloads.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Mobile Web
- Campaign types: CPC, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Interstitial, Native, Offer Wall
- Targeting: Geo, OS
- Key Markets: Asia, Europe, USA
Persona.ly is a tech product company driving mobile user acquisition for brands and app developers, operating world-wide. Using their proprietary bidder and machine-learning algorithms Persona.ly team offers transparent, performance-based, highly-targeted app install and retargeting solutions.
- Mobile platforms: Android, iOS
- Campaign types: CPA, CPE, CPI
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Interstitial, Offerwalls, Rewarded, Rich Media, Video
- Targeting: Custom
- Key Markets: US, South Korea, Japan, Russia, South East Asia and India
| Founded | Employees | Social | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 11-50 | 3k+ |
Bidease is a mobile DSP platform for mobile marketers. Its built on a foundation of proprietary programmatic advertising technology, Machine Learning, and first party data. Bidease team optimizes campaigns across all major mobile formats for desired post-install behaviors at no risk to its clients’ bottom line.
- Mobile platforms: iOS, Android, Mobile Web
- Campaign types: CPI, CPA, CPM
- Ad formats supported: Banners, Interstitial, Native, Rewarded Video, Video
- Targeting: Carrier, Device, Gender, Geo, Interests, IP, OS
- Key Markets: global