A fool and his money are easily parted, especially when it comes to user acquisition.

And as Israeli mobile apps measurement platform AppsFlyer points out, there are currently plenty of ways you can spend your money.

But which are the best?

That's the question it's set out to answer through the analysis of billions of in-app events during Q1 2013.

The colour and the shape

According to its figures, incentivised downloads (the purple circle) provide the highest conversion rate, but at a very low quality of user in terms of their longterm activity.

Similarly, search (the yellow circle) provides great quality of users, but at a low conversion rate, and a low volume.

The diameter of each circle represents the volume each of the six types of user acquisition channel can provide.

So it's social discovery (the blue circle) that AppsFlyer says works the best. In particular, it says that since Facebook got heavily into app discovery, this channel has become pre-eminent - something Facebook itself has noted. 

"Facebook Mobile App Install Ad unit was by far the most effective social driver of high quality users at large volumes," AppsFlyer notes on its blog.

Ranking method

In terms of other channels, cross promotions (green circle) provides similar quality to app discovery platforms (red circle), but with a higher conversion rate and at a lower volume.

As you might expect, general ad networks (orange circle) provide the most volume of users, but these are both low quality and offer a low conversion rate.

"With app marketing the Wild West for game developers, we found that some channel distribution tactics perform better than others," commented AppsFlyer CEO Oren Kaniel.

"But there is one piece of advice I'd offer all game app developers and that is to continuously measure every marketing action you take so that you know which implementation for which media performs best.

"And keep on measuring because performance varies on a weekly basis."

[source: AppsFlyer]