Introduction to social gaming analytics - what to measure, how it\'s measure, and some thoughts on how to iteratively improve. Talk given to Girl Geek Dinners - Philadelphia in July 2012.

1. Social Games – Metrics that Matter
Girl Geek Dinner #ggdphl
23 July 2012

2. Today’s Topics
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 Why is this topic important?
 Which metrics & how to measure them
(calculations & tools)
 How do you know what’s good?
 The two sides of metrics and reporting: for your
investors, and for you
 How to iteratively improve them
 The importance of prioritization
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

3. A bit about me
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 15 years in Internet/E-commerce/Technology Product
Management – most of it in San Francisco
 Led product for several startups
 One funded by Benchmark, sold to AT&T/YellowPages.com
 Another spun out of Microsoft Ventures in social networking
 Most recently VP, E-commerce Nutrisystem ($750mil+ in
revenue, most of it online)
 Search and advertising, B-to-B and B-to-C
platforms, telephony, social networks, gaming, online marketing
 Currently Founder & CEO of Sepiida
 Clients include Zynga, Haymarket Media, Coveroo, JumpRamp
Games, Ryzing
 BA Politics (NYU), MS Computer Science (Stanford)
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

4. Why is this topic important?
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 People think of gaming as creative - it is!
 Just like with any interface-enabled product or
technology, there is a business behind it
 “Nowadays” business is measured through data and
metrics
 Big social gaming studios like Zynga think of
themselves as analytics companies:
http://on.wsj.com/nJsdT9
 Great designers have a strong sense of, and respect
for, data and analytics
 Investors care about the metrics
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

5. So, what are these metrics?
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 Game-agnostic Metrics
 DAU, WAU, MAU
 D1, D7, D30 Retention (and so on…)
 DAU/MAU
 Installs/DAU
 K-factor
 ARP/DAU
 Game-specific Metrics
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

6. Metrics: DAU, WAU, MAU
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 DAU = Daily Active User
 WAU = Weekly Active User
 MAU = Monthly Active User
 Active User – someone with a session in a given time
period
 Many game-hosting platforms
(Yahoo, Facebook, Google, etc.) provide this data 
publicly!
 You should reconcile against your own DB
 How valuable is a “session”? Does this metric matter?
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

7. Metrics: D1, D7, D30 Retention
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 “D” = Day
 D0 is the day the user first installs the app
 D1 is the next day, D7 the 7th day after, and so on
 Two ways to compute:
 On the day (industry standard)
 Within the period (more helpful for running your biz)
 Need to compute this from your DB
 Use this for cohort analysis as you change features
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

8. Metrics: DAU/MAU
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 DAU divided by MAU
 If this value is 1, then all of the people who logged
in over the course of the past 30 days also came
every day within that 30 day period  highly
retentive game
 If this value is close to 0, people are not using this
anywhere near daily
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

9. Metrics: Installs/DAU
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 An Install is a new user to your game
 # of Installs on that day divided by the DAU for that
day
 This is a measurement of how many new users you
are getting
 But you don’t want this to be close to 1 (especially
well after launch)
 Thismeans that people aren’t coming back
 Unless you can explain it with big acquisition
marketing efforts
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

10. Metrics: K-factor
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 Measures the virality of your social game
 Viral channels are: emails, social network
communication channels, other user-shared
links/entry points
 One standard way to measure: Viral Installs / Total
Installs
 Metric is beholden to the tempers of the platform
you are running on
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

11. Metrics: ARP/DAU
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 Average Revenue Per DAU
 Revenue generated per day / DAU for that day
 In the end, you have to make money!
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

12. Metrics: Game-specific KPIs
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 After all the standard ones, you should have a list
of metrics you are monitoring within your specific
game
 What makes sense for one game doesn’t for
another
 Ifyou have a social building feature, there are metrics
relevant to that
 A decorating game would have others
 Track a lot, but deeply monitor a few
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

13. Metrics: Tools for tracking
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 Need to capture the data in your DB
 Better to do this from the beginning, as you build
each new feature. THINK DATA.
 Simple DB queries can help, but that gets old soon.
 Tools like Kontagent are big-ticket resources for
social gaming analytics. We also like RJ Metrics for
this.
 It’s
all about database analytics that contain
behavioral and transactional data.
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

14. What’s a good value for a metric?
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 It depends 
 On the state of the social network platform you’re
running on
 On the nature of your particular game
 On where you are in your evolution
 On what you need to succeed as a business
 On the state of the industry
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

15. Good values for metrics (cont’d)
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 Need to look at your own business deeply –
connecting one metric with another to draw
conclusions
 For example, let’s say MAU is growing really nicely.
DAU is flattish.
 What does that mean?
 It means you have a lot of churn.
 Is that bad or good?
 The answer to that is in the eye of the beholder!
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

16. Good values for metrics (cont’d)
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 Beware of researching benchmarks
 You’ll get every possible answer if you read online
 Older news is old news
 Talking to people – they usually inflate
 Figure out WHAT YOU NEED
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

17. Investors!
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 They want data
 They are talking to their friends who have data
 But what data?
 Typically, what you need to be looking at to actively
manage your business is pretty different than what the
investors want to look at
 For example, what are you supposed to do with the DAU
metric when it’s flat??
 Takes much deeper set of analytics to fix it
 But the investor just wants to see DAU growing
 Have an investor dashboard and then have an internal set
of analytics/reports  Keep them separate!
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

18. Improving your metrics by using
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data
 It starts with capturing the data
 Go for breadth, go for depth
 Part of every feature design needs to be data
 Don’t debate too much – A/B test lots of things
 If you’re sophisticated enough, tools like Bees & Pollen can be interesting for
going beyond A/B
 When you find a top-line metric under-performing, understand its
component parts
 Go deep on data
 Beware of looking at how other games do a particular mechanic or
feature
 Be ready to kill features and/or abandon optimization
 Beware of “killer features” 
 Most big metrics improvements we’ve achieved have occurred through low-
cost optimizations rather than high-cost feature development
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

19. Prioritization
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 With all this data, you can drown
 Key is PRIORITIZATION!
 If you’re having trouble with D1 retention, don’t
worry about features that are used by more
advanced users
 Determine which features are used by whom by
looking at data – not based on your opinion
 You’re not going to make a dent in ARP/DAU if you
can’t get people to come back for a second day!
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

20. Questions?
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(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential

21. Contact Info
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Anita Garimella Andrews
Founder & CEO – Sepiida
@agarimella
anita@sepiida.com
215.600.4987
@websepiida
http://www.sepiida.com
(c) 2012 Sepiida - Proprietary & Confidential