Insights · 18 October 2026

Unit economics: what to know before you buy users

Paid user acquisition has a simple rule: a player has to bring back more than they cost. For a young studio, the hard part is knowing both numbers well enough to trust them before the budget is gone.

The three numbers

CPI, cost per install, is what you pay on average to get one player.
LTV, lifetime value, is what one player brings in over their whole time in the game, from ads and purchases together.
Payback period is how long it takes for that revenue to cover the CPI.

Here is a made-up example. Suppose a group of players costs $0.50 per install, and by day 30 each has earned $0.40 on average. That group has not paid back yet. Whether it ever will depends on how much these players keep earning after day 30.

Payback matters for cash as well as profit. A campaign can be profitable on paper and still cause trouble if a small studio has to wait many months to get its money back.

Early retention comes first

If most players leave within the first day, buying more of them only speeds up the loss. Fix the first session before you scale spending. Look at where new players stop in your funnel: the tutorial, the first levels or the first difficult moment.

Run a small test

You can get useful signals from a small budget if you plan the test around one question.

Choose one market and one store. Results vary between countries and platforms, so mixing them makes the numbers harder to read.
Check your tracking first. Install attribution and revenue events must work before you spend anything.
Try a few different creatives. The ad often has a large effect on who installs and what they cost.
Compare groups by install date. Follow everyone who installed in the same week, and track their revenue by day 1, day 7 and day 30.

Treat early numbers as an estimate. Revenue on day 7 can help you project later revenue only once you have older groups to compare it with, and a projection built on very few players can be badly wrong.

When to scale

Spend more only when three things hold: new players stay at a healthy rate, revenue per install is on course to beat CPI within a period you can afford, and the numbers hold up as the budget grows. CPI often rises with scale, because the cheapest audiences run out first, so increase spending in steps and check the numbers at each one.