Google has announced a set of new additions for its app analytics solution Firebase, which will help businesses get a more in-depth understanding of how people are using their apps.
As explained by Google:
"For businesses to make the best decisions about where to invest their marketing budget, it’s critical that they understand user behavior on both their web and app properties. And while a website is often the first customer touchpoint, for many businesses, apps are where customers are spending more of their time. As a result, marketers need to capture audience insights from their app analytics that they can then take action on, both within and outside of their apps."
Through Firebase, Google provides the capacity for app providers to manage their insights around 'events', data options which Firebase can track around app usage.
Improving on this, Firebase will now enable more advanced tracking through these additional event parameters:
- Dynamic audience evaluation - Audiences are now dynamic by default, meaning Analytics will automatically include users as soon as they meet your criteria, and automatically exclude users when they no longer do. This allows you to “set and forget” your audiences while they populate, without the hassle of constantly re-evaluating them.
- Audience exclusion - Audiences can be more precisely defined by adding exclusion criteria. For example, you can create a list of users that added an item to a shopping cart and of those users, exclude those who have also made a purchase.
- Membership duration - Audiences can now include a membership time frame, such as “users that have converted in the last 30 days,” so your audiences and messaging remain fresh and timely.
These new additions will allow for more complex audience tracking, and targeting for future ad campaigns. The qualifiers will take into account user actions, which will ensure that you're targeting the right users at the right stage in their usage cycle, better promoting further app use.
Interestingly, these new additions coincide with the release of a new report from Sensor Tower which shows that US iPhone users spent, on average, $79 on in-app purchases last year, up 36% on 2017.
As reported by TechCrunch:
"Much of that increase can be attributed to mobile gaming, which accounted for more than half of this per-device average. However, more substantial growth took place in the categories outside of gaming - including those categories where subscription-based apps tend to rule the top charts."
While previous studies have shown that consumers generally only use a few apps consistently, the growth of subscription-based apps could re-ignite brand interest in app marketing.
These are the app categories which saw the biggest increases in spending growth.
With advanced tracking capacity, and consumers more willing to spend money in-app, there could be new opportunities emerging within the space. You still need a compelling app, to fill a consumer need with your tool. But the data shows that there's been little slowdown in enthusiasm for app spending, when relevant.