Facebook Ads Cost Per App Install Benchmarks for Legal

Introduction

Legal ads for app installs showed a dramatic, stop-and-start year compared with broader platform norms. This analysis is based on $3B worth of advertising data from our dataset, which provides strong directional benchmarks. This analysis explores ad performance trends for Legal in All countries available compared to the global benchmark.

Across the 13-month series (Jul 2025–Jul 2026) the Legal cost-per-app-install (CPI) began near $9.95, bounced through a mid-year band of $9–$19, then punctuated the timeline with two pronounced lifts — February 2026 and an extreme spike in July 2026. The 13-month average CPI was about $21.8, but that average masks a typical mid-teens run rate: excluding the July 2026 outlier, the mean falls to roughly $15.6.

The story in the data

Starting point: $9.95 (Jul 2025). Ending point: $96.91 (Jul 2026) — roughly a tenfold increase (≈+875%) from start to finish. The series low was $9.36 (Dec 2025) and the high was $96.91 (Jul 2026). Notable peaks include February 2026 at $30.13 (a sharp lift from $12.83 in Jan) and the final month’s dramatic jump to $96.91.

Month-to-month movement was uneven. Typical moves through most months were single- to low-double-digit percent changes (e.g., +26% Jul→Aug, +25% Aug→Sep, −37% Nov→Dec). Two months disrupted that rhythm: Jan→Feb surged ~+135%, and Jun→Jul exploded ~+556%. Measured as absolute monthly percent change, the average across the full series was ~77% — driven by those two anomalies. Excluding July’s outlier, average monthly absolute change falls to ~33%, reflecting a generally choppier but less extreme pattern.

From a distribution view, most months sat in a $9–$20 band; episodic lifts pushed CPI into the $30 range and, once, near $100.

Seasonal and monthly dynamics

Seasonally, the Legal CPI showed softer levels entering Q4 (Oct–Dec) with the lowest point in December ($9.36), then a rebound into January before a pronounced February spike. Spring (Mar–May) returned to more moderate levels between $14–$19, before the anomalous July jump. The pattern suggests pockets of elevated competition or supply changes during late winter and a severe outlier in mid-summer, producing a jagged cadence rather than a smooth Q4 ramp or Q1 recovery alone.

Country vs. Global

This series represents Legal across all countries available and functions as the baseline in this dataset. Viewed against broad-platform CPI norms (the global benchmark represented here), Legal’s aggregate pattern is characterized by a lower mid-year floor (single-digit to mid-teens) punctuated by sharper volatility — February and July widened the gap versus the central trend. At its narrowest, typical months were roughly in line with a mid-teens global CPI; at its widest (July 2026), Legal CPI exceeded the typical 12‑month average by more than 6x.

Across descriptors common to performance reporting — Facebook Ads benchmarks, CPC trends, CPM analysis, CTR performance and country-specific ad costs — the Legal industry ad performance in this aggregated dataset reads as generally moderate-cost with episodic, high-impact spikes.

Understanding Cost Per App Install benchmarks for the Legal industry across All countries available helps advertisers evaluate industry ad performance and compare month-to-month movement against the broader global patterns.