Pop Quiz: How Well Do You Know Your Mobile Game Monetization Metrics?

Monitoring metrics about your mobile game?s engagement, retention and revenue requires memorizing a parade of confusing numbers and acronyms. But studying up is worth it: Knowing these numbers inside and out will help you optimize your game for monetization.Here?s a quick quiz to test your knowledge of the metrics that matter most for indie mobile game monetization. If you need a primer first, check out my recent post about the three most important metrics to track every single day.Good luck! Answers are at the bottom.1) What?s the best way to measure how popular my game is in terms of engagement?

1. Check Daily Active Users (DAU) numbers.
2. Check Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU) numbers.
3. Measure your Facebook ?likes.?
4. Check Monthly Active Users (MAU) numbers.

2) You?ve built a game that performs best when players come back multiple times per day. What metric should you examine?

1. DAU
2. Session length
3. Ratio of DAU to MAU
4. Average Session Counts (# of Sessions / # of Games)

3) Average session length denotes:

1. Most likely drop-off point for players.
2. Your game?s popularity.
3. Summation of all time spent in-app for an average player.
4. Daily unique events.

4) Alex wants to know how popular his mobile game is, so the first thing he does is check how many people ?like? his game on Facebook. What should he be doing instead?

1. Nothing ? Facebook ?likes? are the best indicator of his game?s popularity.
2. He should analyze retention metrics (Day 1, Day 7 retention numbers) by cohort to see how long people play and engage with the game depending on when they first installed it.
3. He should be paying close attention to his game?s app store reviews.
4. He should be calculating the ratio of Daily Active Users to Monthly Active Users.

5) Alex also wants to know the effectiveness of his social ads. What?s the smartest thing he can do?

1. Monitor click-through rates.
2. Track players? average session counts as well as average session lengths.
3. Calculate the K-factor of social sharing.
4. Measure overall installs from the campaign.

6) Conversion percentages are used to measure:

1. The number of players who pay any amount compared with the total number of players.
2. How quickly players convert in your game.
3. Your overall ROI.
4. How well your social media marketing efforts are working.

Answers:1) 2. Look beyond DAU numbers to calculate the average revenue each of your daily active users brings in (ARPDAU).2) 4. Average session counts show how many times players are returning to your game per day, which is important if your game relies on multiple return visits.3) 1. Studying average session lengths gives you insight into the specific points in time when players drop off.4) 2. To get a deeper look at your game?s popularity, look at how many players stick around after Day 1, Day 7, Day 28, etc. But you also have to look at these numbers across different cohorts of players who join your game at different times to get the full picture.5) 3. K-Factor is the growth rate of an app based on existing players promoting the game via social media. It?s calculated by taking the number of social shares made by each player and multiplying it by the conversion percentage of each social share. So if your customer shared your game five times, and one in five (0.2) of those recipients installs your game, your K-Factor is 5 x 0.2 = 1.6) 1. This is the most basic way to look at conversion: Simply take the number of players paying any amount and divide by your total number of players.?