Glossary

A/B Testing – The common name for a randomised controlled trial with two groups: a control group and a test group.

Acquisition – The part of the player lifecycle related with the organic, viral or paid acquisition of new players.

ARPDAU – Average Revenue per Daily Active User. It is the daily revenue divided by the number of daily active users. In simple terms, it is the daily ARPU.

ARPPU – Average Revenue per Paying User. It is the revenue divided by the number of payers that originated the revenue. A high ARPPU often correlates with a low conversion rate and vice versa.

ARPU – Average Revenue per User. It is the revenue divided by the users. It is often calculated to a cohort of users or a period of time.

Click-Through Rate or CTR – Is the rate between the number of clicks on an ad of a marketing campaign and the number of times (called impressions) the ad was displayed.

Churn – Leaving the game. Churn is our worst enemy, the living evil of game analytics. It is, literally, the opposite of retention.

Cohort – The common name given to a group of users that started to play in the same day. It differs from the common meaning of cohort which is often referred as a segment.

Conversion Rate – The rate of payers of a group of users, usually expressed as a percentage. Conversion rate can be applied to a cohort, segment, time interval or a mix of all.

DAU – Daily Active Users. It is simply the count of unique users on a specific day.

Day X – Usually used with Retention and Cohort ARPU, Day X is he difference in days between the date of interest and the date that a cohort started to play. As an example, if a group of players started to play on March 8th, then March 9th Day 1, March 10th is Day 2, etc.

DLC – Downloadable Content. Additional content made available for the same game. It can be paid or free.

Engagement – The part of the player lifecycle related to meaningful interactions with the game.

ETL – Extract, Transform and Load are the procedures associated with gathering data from data sources into a central data warehouse.

IAP – In App Purchase. A in game real money purchase.

KPI – Key Performance Indicator. A value that reflects performance towards a goal. The Wikipedia Performance Indicator page explains it quite well.

LTV – Lifetime Value is the total value of the player. It includes direct value, through monetisation for instance, and indirect value, through other players acquired through virality, chart position, etc.

MAU – Monthly Active Users. It is simply the count of unique users on a specific month.

Monetisation – The part of the player lifecycle related to player monetisation. Although it can (and should) include advertising, it often devotes almost exclusively to in app purchases.

Retention – The part of the player lifecycle that relates to players returning to the game. Retention does not imply any kind of meaningful action other than running the game. It is, literally, the opposite of churn.

Retention Rate – The rate of players of a cohort that returned x days after they started to play. As an example, retention day 1 is the number of players that opened the game one day after they started to play divided by the total number of players of that cohort. Retention rate is usually expressed as a percentage.

ROI – Return on Investment. A positive ROI means that our revenue return is higher than the investment. A high ROI means that the revenue return is much bigger than the investment. Nice Wikipedia page about it.

Segment – A group of users that shares one or more characteristics like country, level, etc.

Soft Purchase – An in game purchase made with in game currency.

User Acquisition – All marketing activities with the objective of acquiring new players or reengaging churned players.

Virality – The part of the player lifecycle related to how players, through game mechanics, acquire other players to the game. It is closely related with acquisition.