How to Measure KPIs and Metrics for Mobile Video Game’s Success

13 min readFeb 26, 2021

Every element of the App Page the Google Play or App store has the power to drive mobile game downloads. This is a place to for publishers showcase the mobile game app. The App Store Optimization process never stops. Many of the categories below will require constant A/B testing to figure out what work the best.

App Name: How well does the name of the app describe what is the app about? The name should be simple, but memorable, it should be easy to spell and not too similar to any of the existing apps.

App Logo: How well does the logo describe your app? Will it intrigue the potential user? App Logo is one of the first graphic elements that users see and it can make a strong impression. It should be simple, but recognizable.

App Screenshots & Videos:How many app screenshots are there? Do the screenshots demonstrate the main functionalities of the app? Screenshots should be handpicked to communicate app’s features.

App Rating and Reviews: How many app ratings and reviews are there? Are they positive? How well is the overall score of the app? Reviews certainly have an impact on anybody looking at the app’s page — but it’s not only about the summary rating. This feature should be used for directly addressing users’ feedback, questions, and concerns.

App Description: What’s the app story? How well it describes the main features of the app? App Description should be engaging, it should highlight the features and the functionalities of the app. You should tell the users why is your app unique. The tone should convey the tone of the brand and app experience.

Think about the localization of the app store page for each target market — including keywords. It can drive up to 7x more downloads and increase revenue.

In the App Store, there are 2 categories you can assign to the app — primary and secondary. The primary category is particularly important to the app’s discoverability in the App Store.

Choosing the right keywords is a part of long term ASO strategy. Researching the keywords should be done before you publish the app. Keywords can be anything that comes to the mind that is relevant for the app, like the tasks the app performs or the main features.

Tell the media outlets about your new product. Find the media outlets that are excited about new apps. But have in mind that early adopters don’t necessarily represent your ideal user.

Offer the users access to exclusive content or features. Referrals and social proof can fuel growth.

The most effective mobile user acquisition strategy is a hybrid one. Combining paid user acquisition with organic efforts will help you get the most out of your ad spend.

KPIs

KPIs are your Key Performance Indicators. They’re the metrics that you will use to define whether your game is meeting your objectives. You need to be able to define your own KPIs in order to ensure you are properly measuring your game on your own parameters. As each game is different, your KPIs can vary on a game-to-game basis.

The number of times that an app is downloaded to a device is perhaps the simplest and most obvious way to track its popularity among users. And of course, you should be tracking app downloads, as this KPI is the foundation that most of the rest of them are built upon.

AARRR

The basic concept of analytics is based on 5 types of measurements of user behaviour (known as AARRR):

Acquisition — where / what channels do users come from?
Activation — do users have a great first experience?
Retention — do they come back & revisit over time?
Referral — do they like it enough to tell their friends?
Revenue — can you monetize any of this behavior?

DAU — Daily Active Users

DAU or “daily active users” defines unique users who used the app within a single day (24-hour period). Have in mind that some companies will calculate DAU in different ways since they’re tracking different user actions.

DAU = Number of users who opened your app in a day

MAU — Monthly Active Users

MAU or “monthly active users” defines unique users who used the app at least once in the last month (30-day period).

To qualify as an MAU, a usr just has to log in s\he doesn’t need to engage with the product. With that being said, having a high MAU doesn’t mean you are going to have high user engagement.

The ratio of two interconnected metrics, DAU and MAU, Shows you how well your game retain users.

MAU = Number of users who opened your app in a month

Stickiness Rate

By dividing DAU over MAU, you’re able to see your stickiness rate. This gives you an insight into a really important question — how many monthly users are daily users?

Also, an effective way of measuring your stickiness rate is when you combine your Power users and Loyal users. Power users are people who use your app 10+ times per month and Loyal users are people who return to your app within 3 months of their first session.

In 2016 a Silicon Valley analyst, Andrew Chen analyzed over 125 million mobile games and apps that had over 10,000 downloads on Google Play
Store. Here’s what he found out:
• the average app loses 77% of its users in the first 3 days of the install
• after a month, 90% of users stop using the app.
• after 3 months, 5% of users will continue using it.

In conclusion, if you manage to get your users to play your game for the first 3 days, they’re much more likely to continue playing it over a longer
period of time.

Stickiness Rate = DAU / MAU

Retention Rate

Retention rate is one of the most important metrics to track in mobile games because it directly impacts your revenue numbers. Calculating your retention rate is pretty easy and you can follow a formula
that goes like this:

The retention rate gives insight into game performance and general user experience. Mostly, we keep track of day 1, day 7 and day 30 retention rate mobile game metrics so we can know if our games are built to last.

Day 1 Retention — It’s all about first impressions. You have to make sure users want to come back for more. They need to get to know the product and understand its value and advantages. This is called onboarding. If not done properly, the odds of churning will drastically increase.

Day 7 Retention — This is usually a turning point for the average user. It tells you how much users like the game, interface and overall experience. It determines whether they’ll continue playing your game.

Day 30 Retention — This is when your customer base has shrunk and the remaining users are the ones who play it on a weekly or even daily basis. These players are your loyal users. They like the game. They play it regularly. They’re much more likely to make an in-app purchase.

The covid effect -12% drop in the retention rate of the average app in 2020, while total engagement metrics spiked during lockdown and beyond due to massive demand among new and existing users: app sessions went up 30% year-over-year. As overall quantity jumped and competition further intensified, user quality for the average app suffered.

İOS quality 42% higher long-term retention (Week 12 rate) among iOS users compared to Android users, as the gap between the platforms widens over time; however, quality comes at a cost with iOS media more expensive than Android.

Remarketing uplift 85% uplift in long term week 12 retention rates among apps that run remarketing campaigns vs. apps that do not; a 70% gap was seen in day 30 rates.

GEO divide 80% higher retention rates in developed markets vs. developing markets. Finland, Singapore, Japan, Ireland, and Denmark top the list, while Brazil, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey, and India are at the lower end.

Organic user value 23% better day 30 retention rates among organic users vs. non-organic users; the trend was demonstrated across every vertical with the exception of Gaming and Video Players.

As marketing budgets increase, and as marketers are becoming increasingly reliant on non-organic installs to drive demand, it will only get harder going forward. Diving deep into the data to find high quality users for acquisition is now more important than ever.

2020 was no game, but it was big for mobile apps in many verticals.

With exponentially more home time during and after pandemic lockdowns, users turned to mobile apps. They were looking to be entertained (playing games, watching movies, listening to music), to exercise and meditate, order food with restaurants closed, educate when schools were shut down, shop as stores were either closed or avoided due to safety concerns, etc.

As a result, engagement metrics — total app sessions and loyal users (active on day 30) — spiked during lockdown and beyond (+30% and +25% between September 2019 to September 2020, respectively). However, retention rates of the average app dropped 12% in the same time frame.

Clearly, fierce competition for user attention during this unusual year has made it very difficult for apps to hold on to users.

It appears more free time led to increased usage in the short term, which in turn led to a shorter shelf life than usual, as users quickly moved on to the next app or used existing apps less often.

The quality of organic users, demonstrated in day 30 retention rates displayed here, is seen across verticals with only the Gaming and Video Players categories having their non-organic users outperform organic ones.

Gaming apps are known for their ability to target high quality users by leveraging data at a granular level to make smart user acquisition decisions.

They have confidence in their ability to drive profitable investments in marketing because of their use of sophisticated LTV models and predictive analytics.

To drive demand, marketers test various markets in search of both quantity and quality.

Quantity is more intuitive — we know that the number of smartphones in highly populated countries (e.g. Brazil, China, India, and Indonesia) is rapidly growing.

However, when it comes to quality, we can clearly see that developed countries outperform developing markets. This is seen across the globe: from North America (Canada, US has a lower rate as it is the most competitive market), Western Europe (especially in Noridc countries), and Asia (Singapore, Japan and Korea).

Large developing nations are ranked at the bottom, with the largest one (India) closing the list.

The gap is significant at 80%.

But, as always, it is important to remember that quality comes at a cost. Indeed, the cost of media in the former group is much more expensive than the latter.

As the cost user acquisition continues to climb, re-engaging with existing users via owned and even paid channels is considerably cheaper.

Since most apps experience retention woes, it only makes sense to, at the very least, explore the impact remarketing has on retention and your bottom line.

Although the gap wasn’t large, subscription-based games saw consistently higher retention rates than non-subscription games. The difference was most obvious in Q2 2020 amid COVID-19, when non-subscription games saw a day 7 retention of 13 percent while subscription-based games saw a higher retention of 13.7 percent. (Sensortower)

CR — Churn Rate

Churn rate is the exact opposite of the retention rate. You keep track of lost users (the ones who uninstalled your app). In other words, the churn rate measures the percentage of users that stop playing the game over a period of time.

According to Clevertap, most app owners lose more than 90% of new users in the first month after the install. The average mobile app loses 77% of its DAUs within the first 3 days after install. Within 30 days, that number jumps to 90%. Within 90 days, it’s over 95%.

Churn Rate = (Users at beginning of period-Users at end of period) / Users at beginning of period

Churn isn’t simple and straightforward. A wide variety of factors come into play — and it differs for each set of users.

But common sources of churn include things like:

Cost
Poor onboarding experience
Poor user interface or user experience
Lack of features
Competitor products
Poor product/market fit
Lost value perception of the app

Let’s start with some quick facts and benchmarks for mobile apps:

Across iOS and Android, worldwide retention after 90 days is just 4%.
90% of people who install an app will abandon it within a month.
Just 24% of users accessed an app one day after first use
The average Android app loses 80% of daily active users within 3 days after install.

Probability Churn Rate (Monthly- by Stephen Noble = (#of churns / ((Users at start of month * Days in the month)+(New users * 0,5*Days in the month))*Days in the month

Once you’ve established your baseline rates, you can use cohort analysis to find out where to focus your retention efforts.

Acquisition Channel (Where are your most successful users coming from? Search, social, paid ads, referral, etc.)
Action (What actions do your most successful users take? Create an account, create a playlist, add 5 friends, etc.)
Time (How long does it take your most successful users to complete those actions? An hour, a day, a week?)

The y-axis shows a series of groups representing new users who first downloaded the app on that specific day. The x-axis indicates the number of users who launched the app that same day, one day after, two days after, etc.

With this graph, you can see where the most significant drops in user retention occur.

ARPU — Average Revenue Per User

Companies typically calculate ARPU on a monthly basis. In short, the metric gives you an idea of how much the average customer spends per subscription.

ARPDAU is a metric that stands for “Average Revenue Per Daily User”. Unlike ARPPU which includes all users, ARPDAU refers to daily active users only. This metric reveals how much revenue is generated from those users over a 24-hour period.

ARPU = Total Revenue(Time period)/ # of Users(Time period)

Tracking your ARPU encourages you to dig deeper into your customers’ desires so you can learn what drives them to spend.

For example, you might notice that your best and most loyal customers gravitate toward higher-priced plans. On the flip side, your lowest-value customers are the first to churn. These revelations have a direct impact on how you position your product and ultimately grow. If you aren’t actively increasing your ARPU, you’re fighting an uphill battle.

LTV — Lifetime Value

One of the most important analyses for free-to-play developers is lifetime value, or LTV. If we know how many days the average user spends in the application and how much money he brings in an average per day, we can estimate how much money he will bring for his entire life in the application.

LTV= Lifetime*ARPU

There is no typical LTV because there is no typical game and the ROI on a game varies greatly based on many factor including:

Developer’s understanding of how to monetize the game
The cost of user acquisition (much lower for companies with scale that can cross promote in their games)
User retention levels (again, certain companies are much more adept at user retention and reactivating inactive users)
Viral results. Do users drive additional users to the game? An adept developer will know how to design the product in a way that encourages viral behavior.
Genre and saturation. Does the game appeal to a loyal demographic? Is it a clone or a groundbreaking new concept?
Marketing budget.

Many additional factors affect the LTV of a game.

ATV — Average Transaction Value

ATV or “Average Transaction Value” is a metric that de􀂦nes the average value of an in-app purchase or transaction. Driving higher-value purchases will also bring higher value users while you’re able to establish a one on one connection with them. Calculating ATV is done by dividing your ad spend with the number of orders you’ve taken.

Average Transaction Value = Total revenue / Numbers of order taken

CPI — Cost Per Install

The CPI, Cost Per Install, is one of the most famous metrics of the mobile game marketing ecosystem. First things first, let’s start with providing the set of stats that draw the picture for apps Cost Per Install in various countries and mobile platforms.

Key Average Cost Per Install Statistics:

iOS app CPI Globally — $0.86
Android app CPI Globally (Google Play market) — $0.44
iOS app CPI in US — $2.07
Android app CPI in US (Google Play market) — $1.72
Cost Per Install on Facebook Ads — $1.8
Cost Per Install on Twitter Ads — $2.53
Cost Per Install on Instagram Ads — $2.23
Cost Per Install on Search Ads — $1.00

When an advertising network displays your ads with publishers;

- Where will they be seen?

- What advertising formats do they support?

These are all important factors to consider.

Obviously, you want to make sure you’re getting the best price for your CPI campaigns. But as you can see from the data we’ve looked at so far, the least expensive isn’t necessarily the best.

If you can pay $0.20 per install somewhere in South America, but your target market is in the United States, that low rate isn’t going to benefit you at all.

I hope this post, and the above resources, help you find success and optimize your mobile game app marketing.

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