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Daily Active Users (DAUs)

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October 19, 2011 | Nicholas Lovell

GAMESBRIEF FREE-TO-PLAY GAMES FORECASTING SPREADSHEET
intro | MAUs | DAUs | engagement | retention | conversion | whales | ARPPU | platform | CPA REGISTER FOR UPDATES AND DOWNLOAD THE SPREADSHEET

In online games, DAUs has become a bigger focus of attention for game designers than MAUs.

This is good for game design, iteration and rapid changes. It is bad for the finance division. It remains difficult to build a usable monthly forecast from DAUs, and many companies run two different models: one for the games design and one for financial forecasting.

I’ve tried to use a single model here. The result – and a weakness of the model – is that financial results are driven by MAUs rather than by DAUs. I focus on month-on-month retention, rather than day-on-day retention. It was the only choice if I wanted to keep the model simple.

Comparing MAUs to DAUs gives you a powerful metric, often known as engagement, of DAU/MAU. More about that in a separate post on DAU/MAU – engagement.

Benchmarks

Facebook

The most comprehensive source for Facebook data is www.appdata.com. At the time of writing, Cityville remains the most popular game on Facebook by DAU with 13.3m users. We won’t collate DAU information on Facebook games on GAMESbrief because you can get such high-quality, up-to-date information on Appdata, straight from the Facebook API.

iOS

The nearest equivalent to Appdata for iOS is www.appannie.com, although it only tracks ranks, not DAUs.

  • Zynga, iOS/Android/Mobile Web: 11.1 million DAUs (source: theappside)
  • Angry Birds, Rovio, £0.69: 30 million DAUs (source: Inside Mobile Apps)
  • Glu Mobile: 2.1 million DAUs (source: Inside Mobile Apps)
  • Storm8: 4 million DAUs (source: Inside Mobile Apps)
  • My Horse, MunkyFun, free: 500,000 DAUs (source: theappside)
  • Funpark Friends, Tag, free: 8,000 DAUs (source: Pocketgamer)
  • Tiny Tower, iOS, free: 1 million DAUs (source: Ian Marsh)
  • Bejeweled Blitz, iOS, free: 1.1 million DAUs (source: Giordano Bruno Contestabile speaking at GDC said that iOS DAUs are 33% of Facebook DAUs. Facebook figure sourced from Appdata.com)

Related posts

GAMESBRIEF FREE-TO-PLAY GAMES FORECASTING SPREADSHEET
intro | MAUs | DAUs | engagement | retention | conversion | whales | ARPPU | platform | CPA REGISTER FOR UPDATES AND DOWNLOAD THE SPREADSHEET

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