App analytics firm Flurry has launched a service to help iOS developers win back users of their apps that have stopped engaging with their products or have been been tempted away by other apps.

AppCircle Re-Engagement for iOS apps is an advertising service designed to help developers identify and target users to tempt them to return to their apps.

App makers generally invest in short term advertising campaigns when they launch apps, with the aim of getting them into the App Store Top 25 to drive additional downloads. The additional downloads justify the advertising costs but Flurry says that this is becoming harder to achieve and more cost prohibitive due to greater competition.

AppCircle will mean developers can run campaigns for consumers that have already downloaded their apps. Using Flurry Analytics companies can identify segments around age, usage level, gender and geography. In this way, developers can target their most high-value lapsed users.

"The industry has long believed it has a discovery problem, but it doesn't. It has a traffic acquisition problem. What the industry has been missing is the ability to control its own audience's growth destiny, by reaching back out to the right users – their best users – and bringing them back to their apps,” said Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf.

Advertisers pay Flurry for the service based on the number of re-engagements or number of targeted users who open the promoted app. The re-engagement service builds on the AppCircle mobile app traffic acquisition network which was launched around 18 months ago.