What is Impressions Per Daily Active Users (IMPDAU)?
How Do You Calculate Impressions Per Daily Active Users (IMPDAU)?
What is Average Revenue Per Daily Active User (ARPDAU)?
If you're like most people, the term "IMPDAU" probably sounds like a made-up word. And you wouldn't be entirely wrong—it is an acronym, after all. To put it simply, IMPDAU is a KPI that stands for "impressions per day per active user" or "impressions per daily active user"...but what is it?
IMPDAU is a way of measuring how many times content is being seen by people who are actively using your app or website. Now, depending on which particular niche or entrepreneurial circle you fall into, the word "content" could refer to different completely different things.
To the world of content based businesses, IMPDAU is typically used when talking about your internal content; blog posts, user generated content, etc. To content based businesses, IMPDAU can give you a sense of how engaging your content is. If you're seeing a high number of impressions but a low number of active users, that's a sign that people are quickly losing interest in what you have to offer. On the other hand, if you have a small number of impressions but a high number of active users, that indicates that your content is really resonating with people.
If you're a mobile app publisher, you'll come across IMPDAU when interfacing with Ad marketplaces. To mobile app publishers running ads, IMPDAU is used to represent the number of ads, sometimes referred to as ad impressions, that are served on average to each of your active users on a given day. The more ad impressions per daily active user, the more money an app publisher makes. But be careful, too many ad impressions and you annoy and lose your audience base.
To calculate or measure IMPDAU we first have to break down and define what a Daily active user (DAU) is to your business.
Daily active users (DAU) is a metric that measures the total number of users that log in and engage with your product on a daily basis. How a company or mobile app creator defines an "active user" can vary in depth from one company to another but in it's simplest form, it refers to one unique user logging into your app, platform, or piece of software.
Here's 4 other common examples of what might constitute an active user from Mixpanel, a company that specializes in tracking user metrics:
Daily active users is often used as an important health check KPI by founding teams to answer the question: are our customers actually using our product or app? Within DAU, there are new users and returning users; together, they equal the total DAU.
Daily Impressions or sometimes referred to as Ad Impressions are counted by Ad Networks (think Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) whenever an ad is displayed to a user within an app. Daily Impressions vs. Ad clicks should not be confused with each other. In other words, impressions in Ad Marketing tells a mobile app creator or founder how many times an ad was viewed by users using their mobile app. The ad impressions is not contingent with how many times the ad was actually clicked.
For example, let's say you created a mobile app and it's been installed 1,000 times and you've got 100 DAUs. Let's say your mobile app is free to download and you decide you want to monetize your app by showing ads to your users. You sign up for Google AdMob and start showing ads to your users. In this example, you have extremely engaged users and in a day, one of your users of your mobile app is show the same ad 5 times and that user clicks the ad on the 5th time. In this example Ad Impressions are 5 where as Ad Clicks are 1. Google AdMob then pays you, the creator of the mobile app based on the terms you've setup with them, typically based on some combination of impressions and clicks.
For content businesses, IMPDAU is important because it gives founding teams the ability to measure how engaging their content is.
For mobile app and mobile game creators IMPDAU is an important metric that is often used to analyze the total effectiveness of their monetization strategy. A higher IMPDAU means more opportunities to unobtrusively monetize your users from your mobile app or game. If Ad Networks like Google AdMob are paying you per ad impression, it's extremely important to have highly engaged DAUs because you'll be able to show them more ads before closing your app or game.
Another reason why IMPDAU matters is that it can help you identify opportunities for growth. For example, let's say you have a social media platform with 1,000 active users who generate 10,000 impressions per day. If you can find a way to get just 100 more active users, that would increase your impressions by 1,000%. And if each of those new users generated as many impressions as your existing users, your total impressions would double overnight!
ARPDAU is related to IMPDAU but is looked at in terms of dollars vs. impressions. ARPDAU accounts for all your monetization strategies (Ad rev, in-app purchases, subscriptions, etc.) and is a KPI used to measure how well all your monetization strategies are working on a daily basis. Essentially ARPDAU tells you how much money your active users are generating by using your mobile app or game every single day.
IMPDAU may sound like a made-up word, but it's actually a valuable metric for content-driven businesses. By tracking your IMPDAU, you can get insights into how engaging your content is and identify opportunities for growth. So what are you waiting for? Start calculating your own business's IMPDAU today!
