Active user

For marketers and app developers, monitoring active users helps answer critical questions: Are users sticking around after installing? Do marketing campaigns attract engaged users or “one-time” visitors? How sticky is the app experience?

Key Definitions

Daily Active Users (DAU)

DAU represents the number of unique users who opened the application at least once during a single day. This metric provides a real-time snapshot of daily engagement and is particularly useful for tracking the immediate impact of marketing campaigns, push notifications, or seasonal trends.

Monthly Active Users (MAU)

MAU represents the number of unique users who engaged with the application during a 30-day period . The system counts all users who opened the application at least once during the period, regardless of whether they opened it multiple times. MAU provides a broader view of the app’s total engaged audience and is commonly used to measure overall scale and market penetration.

DAU/MAU Ratio (Stickiness)

The DAU/MAU ratio is calculated as (DAU / MAU) × 100%. This percentage reveals how frequently users return to the app. For example, a 50% stickiness rate means the average user opens the application 15 days out of 30 . Higher ratios indicate strong user engagement and habit formation, while lower ratios suggest users are disengaging between sessions.

How Affise MMP Measures Active Users

Affise MMP provides comprehensive activity tracking through dedicated reports and dashboard widgets.

Activity KPI Report

The Activity KPI report is the primary tool for analyzing active user metrics. Access it by navigating to Reports > Activity KPI in the Affise MMP dashboard

Activity KPI Trend Chart

The trend chart allows users to visualize activity data over time by selecting from the following KPIs:

• By DAU: View daily active user trends

• By MAU: View monthly active user trends

• By Sessions: View session volume trends

• By DAU/MAU Rate: View stickiness trends

Why Active User Metrics Matter for MMPs

For a Mobile Measurement Partners like Affise, active user metrics serve multiple critical functions:

1. Campaign Quality Assessment: Install counts alone don’t reveal user quality. By measuring DAU and MAU by partner, advertisers can identify which traffic sources deliver users who actually engage with the app.

2. Retention Validation: Activity metrics over time serve as a proxy for retention. Users who remain active days or weeks after install represent true lifetime value.

3. Pricing Models: Many Affise MMP pricing plans are structured around MAU tiers, making accurate activity measurement essential for proper billing and scaling.

4. Retargeting Opportunities: Users who were active in the past but have since become inactive can be identified through activity reports and retargeted to re-engage them.

Best Practices for Monitoring Active Users

• Track Stickiness Over Time: Monitor DAU/MAU ratio to understand whether engagement is improving or declining. A declining ratio often precedes churn.

• Segment by Acquisition Source: Use partner-level filters to identify which media sources deliver the most engaged users, not just the most installs.

• Use Cohort Mode: Toggle cohort mode to track how specific user cohorts (e.g., users acquired during a particular campaign) behave over time

• Combine with Revenue Metrics: Pair DAU with ARPDAU to understand not just how many users are active, but how much revenue each active user generates daily.

Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) are more than vanity metrics – they are essential indicators of app health, user engagement, and marketing ROI. Affise MMP provides robust tools to measure, segment, and analyze active user data, enabling marketers to move beyond install counting and toward true performance optimization. By understanding which partners deliver engaged users and how stickiness trends evolve over time, app marketers can scale with confidence and maximize lifetime value.