[UA] Overview of Audience reports

The Audience reports provide insight into characteristics of your users.

In this article:

User-agent change to iOS 13

As of September 2019, Apple changed the user agent for the iPad so that it appears as desktop traffic. This change will cause a decrease in iPad tablet traffic and an increase in Safari desktop traffic. Since iPad users will be receiving desktop sites by default, this change in reporting matches the user experience.

Active Users

Track active users for increments of 1, 7, 14, and 28 days, and stay abreast of the level of user enthusiasm for your site or app. Learn more.

Lifetime Value

Understand how valuable different users are to your business based on lifetime performance across multiple sessions. For example, you can see lifetime value for users you acquired through email or paid search. With that information in hand, you can determine a profitable allocation of marketing resources to the acquisition of those users. Mobile-app properties only. Learn more.

Cohort Analysis

A cohort is a group of users who share a common characteristic that is identified in this report by an Analytics dimension. For example, all users with the same Acquisition Date belong to the same cohort. The Cohort Analysis report lets you isolate and analyze cohort behavior. Learn more.

Audiences in Analytics

Create audiences, publish them to Analytics, then apply them to reports to explore audience behavior in response to your marketing. You can use the audience as a secondary dimension in reports, and as a dimension in segments, custom reports, and custom funnels.Learn more

User Explorer

Isolate and examine individual rather than aggregate user behavior. Individual user behavior is associated with either Client-ID or User-ID. Learn more

Demographics (Age, Gender)

Understanding the age-and-gender composition of your audience gives you an opportunity to precisely tailor your content and advertising, from the graphics, language, and technical sophistication you employ on your site to the creative contents and placements for your ads. Learn more.

Interests (Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, Other Categories)

Interest information gives you context for expanding your advertising into related markets (Affinity Categories), and for focusing your advertising on exactly the users who demonstrate a likelihood to consume your content or purchase your products (In-Market Segments, Other Categories). Learn more.

Geo (Language, Location)

It’s important to know whether you’re getting a response from users to whom you direct different language versions of your advertising, but you also want to know what kind of traffic you’re getting from users outside those targets. Maybe you’re advertising in English and Spanish, but also getting high-conversion users who speak French and Italian, indicating an opportunity to localize your ads to those languages and speak more directly to a lucrative market.

You want information from the areas you already target in your advertising, but you should also know about traffic from other geographic areas whose users exhibit a natural interest in your products.

Behavior (New vs. Returning, Frequency & Recency, Engagement)

Measure the gravitational pull of your site, and the extent to which you’re encouraging first-time users to return. You can also see the economic impact of new vs. returning users (e.g., the 28% of users who are returning account for 45% of total transactions).

Technology (Browser & OS, Network)

Understanding the technologies users employ to reach and consume your content lets you fine tune current versions, and plan upcoming implementations. For example, you want to be sure your site is fully functional in current browsers, but you also want to stay abreast of the extent to which users are migrating away from desktop to mobile browsers and apps, and plan your development accordingly.

Mobile (Devices)

See which mobile devices are being used to interact with your content.

iOS Devices: Useragents from iOS devices usually don't provide enough information for Analytics to identify the specific device model. As a result, Analytics usually classifies iOS devices as simply “iPhone”, “iPod”, or iPad”, without specifying the device model. However, hits from InApp Safari (WebView inside apps) contain additional information that can be used to identify the specific device model. As of late 2015, Analytics shows the specific device model when that information is present in the useragent string. InApp Safari hits typically account for less than 10% of a property’s traffic, so most hits still result in only a general device classification (iPhone, iPad or iPod).

The data on reports is mutually exclusive. For example, consider the following report:

Mobile Device Info Session
iPhone 90
iPhone 6 4
iPhone 5 6

This report indicates that there were a total of 100 sessions:

  • 4 from "iPhone 6"
  • 6 from "iPhone 5"
  • 90 from other iPhones for which Analytics was unable to identify the device model.

Custom (Custom Variables, User Defined)

You can use Custom Variables to extend the scope of your Segments. User-level custom variables let you identify users by aggregate behavior over a date range rather than by discrete, single-session interactions with your site.

Benchmarking

Benchmarking allows you to compare your data with aggregated industry data from other companies who share their data. This provides valuable context, helping you to set meaningful targets, gain insight into trends occurring across your industry, and find out how you are doing compared to your competition. Learn more.

Users Flow

Users Flow is a graphical representation of the paths users took through your site, from the source, through the various pages, and where along their paths they exited your site. Learn more.

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