Measure your app's acquisition and retention

1. Open Play Console.
2. Select an app.
3. On the left menu, click User Acquisition > Acquisition reports.
4. Select the Retained installers or Buyers tab.
   • Retained installers: Shows unique users who visited your app's Store Listing, then installed your app, and kept your app installed for up to 30 days.
   • Buyers: Shows unique users who visited your app’s Store Listing, and the number of users who then bought one or more in-app products or subscriptions.
5. Set up the details of your report:
   • To switch between acquisition channel and country views, use the 'Measure by' drop-down.
   • For your report to include users who installed your app without visiting your Store Listing or had the app pre-installed, tick the box next to 'Include installs without Store Listing visit'.
   • To choose a time-based user cohort, use the 'Visitors from' drop-down.

Note: You can only select a tracking period on the Buyers tab. To select a tracking period, your app must offer in-app products or subscriptions. Otherwise, you'll see a 6-month tracking period by default.

Ways to use your user acquisition data

• See how many of your app's Store Listing Visitors took action within 7 days of visiting your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app.
• Compare buyer data between acquisition channels or countries to find out which channels or locations attract the highest value users.
• Compare date ranges to see how your app's user acquisition metrics have changed over time.
• Compare how many of your app's installers kept your app on their device for 7 days versus 30 days.

Acquisition report installs compared to install statistics

Your app's Acquisition reports page tracks user activity that can happen after the end of your date range. This means that your install statistics can be higher on your app's Acquisition reports page compared to its Statistics page for the same date range.

When viewing user acquisition data by channel or country, you'll see the following categories. Keep in mind that you'll only see buyer metrics if you have permission to 'View financial reports' and your app offers in-app products or subscriptions.

• Store-listing visitors: Unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app but haven't installed your app.
• First-time installers: Unique users who installed your app 'X' days after visiting your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app.
• In the Buyers report
  • Buyers: Unique users who bought at least one in-app product or had one or more subscription occurrence(s) 'X' days after visiting your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app.
  • Repeat Buyers: Unique users who bought at least two in-app products or had two or more subscription occurrences 'X' days after visiting your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app.
• In the Retained installers report
  • Retained installers: Installers who kept your app on at least one of their devices for the number of days shown. Installation doesn't mean that the app was opened over this period.

    Note: Starting in September 2017, you may notice a decrease in your app's retained installers data. This is because we've reduced the time period over which we update retention data for reinstalls.

Note: Installs completed over the air or from the web on play.google.com are included in the 'Play Store (Organic)' acquisition channel.

You can download and export monthly reports that include data on retained installers and buyers on the Download reports section of Play Console.

Here’s how to get to the monthly reports from your app’s Acquisition reports page:

1. Open Play Console.
2. Select an app.
3. On the left menu, click User acquisition > Acquisition reports.
4. Above the 'Visitors from' drop-down, select Download.

When viewing user acquisition data by channel, you'll see the following categories:

• All acquisition channels: Total number of unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app.
• Play Store (Organic): Unique users who saw your app's Store Listing by browsing or searching on the Play Store app.
  • Search: Unique users who found your app on Google Play from search results. These users are also counted in the Play Store (Organic) row.

  • Explore: Unique users who found your app on Google Play but not from search results (for example, browsing a category or similar apps cards). These users are also counted in the Play Store (Organic) row.

• Installs without Store Listing visit: Unique users who installed your app without seeing your Store Listing or had the app pre-installed. Includes some installs directly from search results, Play Store on the web, and installs available outside your Store Listing. Excludes sideloads. Tracking period and user cohorts are defined by the installation event instead of the visit.
• Tracked channels (UTM): Unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app from a UTM-tagged link.
• Google Search (Organic): Unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app from a Google Search.
• Google Ads: Unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app from a Google Ads ad. Data between Google Ads and Play Console can differ. For more information, go to using different data sources below.
• Third-party referrers: Unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app from an untagged deep link to the Play Store.

Note: Over-the-air and web (play.google.com) impressions aren't tracked on your app's Acquisition reports page.

Detailed data

To see a detailed view of an acquisition channel, click the channel's name (if available).

To view user acquisition data by country:

1. Open Play Console.
2. Select an app.
3. On the left menu, click User Acquisition > Acquisition reports.
4. Using the 'Measure by' drop-down, select Countries or Countries (Play Store Organic).
   • Countries: Total number of unique users who visited your app's Store Listing on the Play Store app per country.
   • Countries (Play Store Organic): Unique users who visited your app's Store Listing by browsing or searching on the Play Store app per country.

Note: User acquisition data by country is available after 1 February 2016.

If your app offers in-app purchases or subscriptions and you have 'View financial data' permissions, you can view your app’s average revenue per user (ARPU) by acquisition channel or country. You can use this data to optimise your acquisition strategies and understand where your most valuable users come from.

Average revenue per user is calculated by taking the total revenue generated by a set of users through paid app purchases, in-app purchases and subscriptions during time periods that you select and dividing it by the number of unique users that apply to a user metric (e.g. store-listing visitors).

Note: Any refunds that occur during the selected time period are subtracted from the total revenue amount.

1. Open Play Console.
2. Select an app.
3. On the left menu, click User Acquisition > Acquisition reports.
4. Select the Buyers tab.
5. Set up the details of your report:
   • To switch between acquisition channel and country views, use the 'Measure by' drop-down.
   • To adjust how long you want to track how much users spent after viewing your Store Listing for the first time, use the 'Visitors from' drop-down.
6. Below each acquisition channel or country, the average revenue per user (ARPU) is available for each category of users.

Note: Average revenue per user includes all types of revenue generated on Google Play, but only from users who contribute to that metric. For example, a user has to make an in-app or subscription purchase to be included in 'Buyers'. If an app is a paid app, the average revenue per user for 'Buyers' also includes the cost of purchasing the app.