Daily Active Users (DAUs)

DAU is an acronym for Daily Active Users and is one of the key Gaming Analytic metrics. DAU is the number of users that engage in at least one game or area of your app or website in a 24 hour period. The visualization of this metric can provide valuable information on how many customers are using your site per day and it is a good starting point for additional analysis.

Understanding of not only what the DAU metric is, but also the importance of its context, is essential in using this metric to drive your business forward.

Although DAU is important, this metric alone is not necessarily a clear indication of a game or app's performance. An app with 10,000 DAUs, who play the games multiple times per day and active monetization compared to a magazine app that has 2,000,000 DAU with minimal monetization would interpret the DAU metric very differently. A phone app for children my have 5,000 DAUs on a saturday when children are home from school and have time to play, whereas a phone app for adult games may have 5,000 DAUs on a weekday when they are bored at work.

DAU is just a number representing a moment (technically 24-hour period) in time. Understanding who your DAUs are, and the context surrounding the DAU metric is just as important if not more that the actual DAU number itself.