Firebase Analytics calculation of User counts (Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users)

Question

Firebase Analytics reports data w.r.t. Daily/Weekly/Monthly Active Users.

Few questions: (1) Dashboard: Projecting the Daily Active Users to a month, does not match the value shown in Firebase Dashboard.

For e.g. if Daily Active Users is 30K, then Firebase shows the corresponding Monthly Active Users as 150K. Does it imply that there were 30K users in last 7 days, and 120K in the preceding 21days? Not sure why isn't it 30 days x 30K = 900K.

(2) On selecting Firebase > Events > Select_Content > App version Last 7 days: shows approx 100K Last 30 days: shows approx 140K Does it imply that in the 21 day period only 40K User sessions occurred, while the App usage went up drastically in last 7 days?

Please help clarify.

thanks in advance,

Answer 1

The Active Users report in the Firebase dashboard is showing counts of users in the past 30, 7 and 1 day. The values are not projected, but rather based on user engagement that has been measured over those periods. The other thing to keep in mind is for each of those periods, it's the count of unique users over the entire period.

So, for example, if your seeing 150K Monthly Active Users (which is defined here as 30-day active users), that tells you you've had 150K unique users engage with your App in the last 30-day period. If you're seeing 30K Daily Active users, that tells you you had 30K unique users yesterday, and 120K different unique users from the 29 days before yesterday.

If the same user engages with your App more than once in the period, they only count as one. Out of your 30K users from yesterday, a number of those would have presumably engaged in the 29 days before that, so it's expected that your Monthly Active Users would be less than your Daily Active Users x 30 days. How much lower would depend on the specifics of your app, but the closer those numbers are, the more frequently the same users are returning to your App over the 30 days, which is positive in terms of user engagement retention.