What are DAU, MAU, ARPU, etc.
Source: Snowball
Author: Liang Jian
The shopkeeper said that the goods in my shop are seen by many people every day. Although they don’t buy at present, they are very impressed and will be converted into income in the future. The number of times a product has been viewed, that is, how many web pages have been opened on the Internet, is called PV (Page View), which is usually also called the number of views. In order to increase the PV, Zhang San placed several beauty albums at the door of the store. Each passing guest turned over 10 pages, and the PV instantly doubled.
This is also a common way for editors to divide the beauty atlas into dozens of pages, one for each page, in order to complete the PV task in the portal information age. In addition, there are many cheating methods, such as adding a few lines of code to the page, the page can be refreshed automatically, and the number of PV can keep expanding as needed.
Because PV is too easy to inject water, and later many web pages are realized by dynamic loading, PV is of little reference value. For a shop, a person who looks at 1000 items may not have much commercial value. But if 1000 people come, even if everyone only looks at one commodity, its potential value is usually much greater than the former. Therefore, calculating the number of independent visitors is much more reliable than the previous PV. In the Internet industry, this indicator is called UV(Unique Visitor), which independently visits users.
How to count UV? In the past, there was no such high-end technology as face recognition, and the store owner couldn’t remember everyone’s face, so when every guest visited, the store put a number on them. When a computer opens a webpage, it will also be marked by the website in the form of a cookie. Unless all traces of the browser are cleared after each visit, the website will always recognize you. Compared with PV, UV is a great progress. Sometimes, in order to pursue more accurate numbers, UV is improved to an independent IP address. However, due to the increasing popularity of sharing IP addresses and accessing external networks through a single IP in a local area network, this indicator is not used much.
After the rise of video websites, PV evolved into VV(Video View), that is, the number of videos watched by users. In addition, another index-the length of visit-the length of stay in a single visit is adopted, which is like the time for customers to stay in a store once. It is believed that the longer you stay, the more chance you have to squeeze some oil and water from your customers.
Because of the need to compare these indicators between competitive websites, some independent third-party statistical companies were born. One is to sample and count the access data of each website by installing browser tool plug-ins by users; The other is to cooperate with websites and let them add third-party statistical codes to their pages.
But even so, there are some shops that spend money to hire some special trustees and report to the store every day to increase the number of independent visits. These people may even be manipulated by others, and unconsciously, they become part of the access figures. In addition, UV can’t identify the different users behind the shared computer (home, Internet cafe), and the website wants to get more personal information of users, so it introduces another indicator, Rigister Users. Registered users can also inject water, but the cost is higher. You can’t say that everyone who passes by your door is your guest, at least you have to leave a contact information or something.
But even a large number of users who actually fill in the information, if these users do not visit again, they are basically dead users. Only live users have sustainable commercial value. Therefore, the number of daily active users DAU(Daily Active Users), monthly active users MAU(Monthly Active Users) and quarterly and annual active users are more meaningful. Later, after mobile phone access to the Internet became the mainstream, DAU and MAU no longer need to consider whether to register or not, because there is not much difference. DAU and MAU have become the core indicators to measure a website or App.
What is an active user? It can be simply considered that users who have used the website or application in a certain period of time. But what is "use" will be different from company to company. Some people think that as long as they show their faces, they are active users; Others need to complete the specified operation, or the number of visits is more than a certain number. MAU (monthly activity) users are not equal to the total number of DAU (daily activity) per day in a month, because a user who meets the active conditions many times in a month will only be counted once.
To increase the number of active users, on the one hand, it is necessary to activate the existing users to visit again (as the saying goes, "repeat customers"), and on the other hand, new users need to come in. So, from time to time, your mobile phone receives the text message "A batch of young models have arrived …" from the merchants, or a message "A young lady nearby gave you a compliment …" pops up in the mobile App. If you can’t resist the temptation, please respond. Although you only found a stingy man, you have already contributed a day’s work to them.
In order to refine the changing trend of active users, indicators such as new daily activities, new monthly activities and retention rate can also be introduced. The simple understanding of retention rate is how many of the newly added users remain. It is used to evaluate the usability, attractiveness, user’s expected consistency and promotion effect of products, and the retention rate is very critical. In terms of promotion, there is also an indicator called TAC(Traffic Acquisition Costs). Enterprises that pay for the entrance from a third party all the year round usually disclose the expenditure of this project directly and separately in their statements. In addition, it can also be calculated according to the cost of a single new user, which means how much it costs to buy a user.
After Internet companies gradually generate revenue and even profits, some traditional business indicators are also common, such as payment rate, repurchase rate, gross profit rate, net profit, inventory turnover rate, and single-user consumption. ARPU(Average Revenue Per User) is widely used in online games and live broadcast companies. This denominator includes all users, and sometimes only active users are counted. The denominator can also be just the users who have paid, that is, ARP PU (average revenue per paying user)-the average income contributed by each paying user. These indicators can evaluate the value of a single user. It is meaningless to compare DAU and MAU between a store selling yachts and a store selling daily necessities, because the income contributed by a single user is vastly different.
In a word, various indicators, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, are all for reference in order to predict how much money an enterprise can earn in the future. For example, a company with a daily living (DAU) of 100 million, but not much income, or even a loss, may be valued at more than 10 billion dollars; Another company now has good revenue and profit, but its daily activities have hardly increased, and the user payment rate and ARPU value are higher than the industry average, so it will be considered that there is no room for growth, and may only be valued at several times the price-earnings ratio.
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