Understand monetization metrics with strategic guidance

Strategic guidance provides an intuitive interface in Play Console to help monetizing game developers better understand their monetization performance. This way, they can grow their business based on new custom metrics and recommendations from Google Play’s growth consulting experts.

Strategic guidance tools include: 

• a metric hierarchy to help you contextualize how your game's revenue metrics impact your business goals and to understand when to prioritize optimizing for one metric over another
• peer group benchmarks, country breakdowns, and trends to help you understand and identify opportunities to optimize a chosen metric
• recommendations from our growth consulting experts to help you take advantage of these  opportunities

Notes: 

• Strategic guidance is only available for game developers who monetize via Google Play's billing system.
• Strategic guidance metrics and recommendations are tailored to an in-app product-based monetization model, so developers that primarily monetize through subscriptions or paid apps may find this content less relevant.

Using strategic guidance

Strategic guidance is a monetization overview that helps you understand and evaluate your revenue drivers against peers across different countries and periods. For example, you can:

• Use the metric hierarchy to determine which lower-level submetric your teams can influence to realize the biggest opportunity for overall revenue growth.
• Preview time series for specific metrics to understand if your performance is acutely different or part of a trend. You can explore the metric analysis to get detailed information about that metric along with recommendations for how you can improve in this area.
• View a breakdown of performance across countries/regions relative to your engaged user based from those countries/regions to identify underperforming locations.
• Change your peerset comparisons to understand how your game performs vs other genres.

To access and use strategic guidance:

1. Open Play Console and go to the Strategic guidance page (Monetize with Play > Financial reports > Strategic guidance). 
   • Note: You need the View financial data permission to access the Strategic guidance page.
2. In the "Metric hierarchy," select metrics to explore their performance, relationships with each other, and how they compare against your selected peers. The "Performance by countries/regions" section compares your performance across countries/regions to identify more specific opportunities for improvement.
   • Tip: Go to the Metric definitions section below for the full list of metrics in the hierarchy. 
3. When you've identified a metric that you want to explore, click Explore metric analysis to view the Metric analysis page, and get deep insights about that metric. This includes the following:
   • View a full timeline history of performance trends, with peer comparisons.
   • See a breakdown of the metric performance across countries, with peer comparisons.
   • View recommendations from our experts on how to improve that metric, with links to additional resources from Google Play.

Metric definitions

The metric hierarchy contains the following metrics:

Metric	Definition
Average revenue per monthly active user	Gross revenue generated over a 28-day period divided by the monthly active users (28-day rolling) which measures your success in driving revenue from your users.
Monthly buyer ratio	The percentage of monthly active users who made at least one purchase in a 28-day period. This metric is key for understanding buyer conversion and increasing the breadth of your paying user base.
Average revenue per monthly buyer	Also known as average revenue per paying user. This is the revenue your app has generated over 28 days from monthly buyers (people who make at least one purchase in a 28-day period). This metric will help you understand the value of buyers to your business. Note: This is a new metric.
First-time monthly buyer ratio	The percentage of active users who purchase for the first time in a 28-day period. This metric will allow you to analyze how fast you are adding new buyers to your game. Note: This is a new metric.
Returning monthly buyer ratio	The percentage of your monthly buyers who have made a purchase before. This can help you judge if you’re building a loyal paying audience. Note: This is a new metric.
Monthly average revenue per purchase	Also known as average order value, the 28-day gross revenue is divided by the number of purchase over that period. This metric is important for gaining insight into user purchasing patterns, calculating customer lifetime value (CLTV), and determining an optimal pricing strategy.
Purchases per monthly buyer	The average number of purchase made over 28 days by monthly buyers (people who make at least one purchase in a 28-day period). This metric may increase how many users purchase and how often they purchase, helping you to better understand purchasing behavior.

Frequently asked questions

Why isn’t strategic guidance available for my app?

Strategic guidance is only available for game developers that monetize via Google Play's billing system. If this applies to you, but you still can’t see the Strategic guidance page, you may need to request the View financial data permission from your account admin. You can do this by following this Play Console link and making a request.

I have a subscription or premium game; is strategic guidance relevant for me?

Strategic guidance metrics and recommendations are tailored to an in-app product-based monetization model, so developers that primarily monetize through subscriptions or paid apps may find this content less useful.

How are peer groups defined?

Learn more about peer groups and how they're curated in Play Console.

Why is there no data available for my game? What can I do to see the data?

All the metrics are based on revenue data and are usually available up to 7 days before the current date. Games that do not generate revenue will not be able to see any data.

Try selecting a 28-day period, or a different date to increase the amount of data available.