The Firebase Analytics dashboard shows a card for demographics, including age and gender.
According to https://support.google.com/firebase/answer/6317486?hl=en Firebase should be automatically collecting age and gender. Can anyone explain how it collects that information, and if anything else needs to be done in order to provide it?
In my dashboard, I'm seeing no age or gender data. I also haven't found any public API in the firebase-analytics SDK that would allow for setting the age or gender of the user.
If it comes from the advertiser id, does that mean we must also integrate with AdMob in order to get that data -- and if we don't use AdMob, then age and gender are impossible to gather? And does AdMob then also have to be linked with the Firebase project before it can start populating that data?
On Android, this data is derived from the Advertising Id, which is automatically collected on devices with Google Play Services installed. On iOS, this data is derived from the Advertising Identifier (IDFA) when available (i.e. when your app links to the Ad Support Framework). AdMob is not a prerequisite for Age, Gender or Interests on either platform.
Clarifying note from comments: Firebase Analytics demographic reports is thresholded for privacy reasons. Once you have enough data -- at least 10 users per age/gender bracket -- data for that bracket will be shown.
In case someone else stumbles upon this, make sure that you have the google signals enabled in the admin console. This is not part of the firebase analytics onboarding process as far as I remember, and it's off by default.
You can find how to do it here:
https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/9445345?hl=en
Joe, if you are building iOS app and you have no access to IDFA you will not see demographics data for your users. You need to link to ad support framework. Please read the Apple developer documentation on when its okay to use ad support framework in your app.
Related
I am linking my Android and iOS app to Firebase Analytics, and it seems to work well except I cannot collect the "automatic" information about the user, such as gender and age.
I can see some thousands of users, and I can also track custom events (like in-app purchases)
But in the same view, gender and age are not present.
This question looks like the same, but the answer is not applicable: I used DebugView to test it and then deactivated it as per documentation.
of course, View "All Users" audience displays the same data.
There are possible reasons:
Google Signals isn't activated. Make sure that you have enabled Google Signals for your property, because Google signals are session data that Google associates with users who have logged in to their Google accounts and who have turned on Ads Personalization.
Collection of Device Advertising IDs is disabled.
Please ensure that the Collection of Device Advertising IDs is enabled, so that you will be able to see demographic and interest data on the Analytics dashboard since this is used to track user properties such as Age, Gender and Interests. Also, Analytics derives demographics and interests data from the Android Advertising ID or the iOS Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA).
google-services.json or dependencies are outdated
I have such problem. 1 and 3 solve it. You also can contact Firebase Support.
According to this help center page on automatically collected user properties,
For iOS apps, the app must collect IDFA in order to automatically derive the Age, Gender, and Interests properties.
The link in there further clarifies:
On iOS, the SDK collects the Advertising Identifier if it is available. For IDFA to be available, a developer has to link in the following libraries:
libAdIdAccess.a
AdSupport.framework
So you might want to check if you're including the necessary dependencies.
Based on the answer here, Firebase Analytics demographic reports is thresholded for privacy reasons. Once you have enough data -- at least 10 users per age/gender bracket -- data for that bracket will be shown.
I've integrated Firebase Analytics in my project but I encounter some issues:
When I log an event, I don't have access to the value on the Dashboard. Apparently you have access to this information only if you use BigQuery (which is not free). In this answer they suggest a workaround using setUserProperty but first it's a bit messy, and second the userProperty accepts only a limited number of characters for its value so I can't use that.
On Google Analytics, you have a Behaviour Flow where you can see how users is navigating through your app. I haven't been able to find a similar view on Firebase.
So I was thinking of using both. I've created a new property for my app in Google Analytics. As it's mobile only (no website) I've selected 'mobile app' for the property and Google Analytics asked me to link to my Firebase app.
I did so but now I have the exact same information on Google Analytics that I had on the Firebase Dashboard.
So what does it mean? Should I use both but in that case define my Google Analytics property as 'website' to not link it to Firebase? Can I achieve what I want (analysing custom event values and monitor the user flow through the app) using Firebase only?
I went down the same path as you, and finally started exporting to BigQuery and got exactly what I needed. I completely understand the desire for free, but I think you will be surprised at how inexpensive the "Blaze" plan is, since you only pay for what you use. We are logging about 250K Firebase events per day, which equates to US$0.03 per month (as of Dec 2017). The main cost is querying, which we do a LOT of (about 1.6TB per month) which costs about US$3 per month. Our total monthly bill is about US$3.50 per month.
My app uses Admob ads and Google Analytics. Do these collect any sensitive information for which prominent disclosure needs to be provided?
Is it necessary to show an age gate at app start to make sure the user is at least 13 years old?
You need to look at both to determine what kind of data they collect from your users.
AdMob and Google Analytics collects data that can serve behavioral marketing (remarketing) and you're required to disclose this to users and provide them with information how to opt-out of Google's remarketing:
https://support.google.com/admob/answer/2753860?hl=en&ref_topic=2745287
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/
Just doing some quick googling, I found this page that gives some information on admob and COPPA requirements. I want to say that I've never seen an app that uses admob give me some coppa notice, and google analytics would generally only be data you collect from users on who is using your app (general, like age, gender, location, etc) and how. Unless you are specifically targeting ages <13, imo you should be fine.
I would like to segment my android app users into those that use the app daily/weekly/montly, etc. Is this possible with Google Analytics?
I do have a user-ID enabled profile, so the data should be there - I just don't know if there is any way to query all values of a metric (e.g. days since last visit) associated with a single user.
Yes. Under Users Overview section, you can find Hourly/Daily/Weekly/Monthly users.
Is there any way of getting to know who has bought your app on the Android Market? I currently haven't got an account on the market, my app is still in development so i'm asking you guys.
I'd like to know and make a list of the people who purchased, or downloaded for free, my apps. Not their email addresses or anything, just some unique usernames, maybe from the Android Market itself. Is that possible?
If not, is there any way to get this information AFTER the app has been bought? The in-app billing system i'm guessing is anonymous as well, as it's still part of the Google/Android Market billing system. But if i were to use PayPal to make "my own in-app billing" would that work? I'm guessing i can see any PayPal transactions from where/who it originated, no?
If someone can offer me a suggestion on how i could get this information, with the user's willing participation of course, i'd be grateful.
To track users, people generally use some kind of Analytics app:
Google Analytics for Android and Flurry are popular, to name a couple.
I know of no other way to track general downloads, other than the Android developer dashboard/console
To answer your first question:
Google Android purchases (market and in-app) show up in the Merchant section of Google Checkout.
EDIT: Also, once a purchase is made, it is not anonymous and you as a merchant have freedom to contact the customer directly.
EDIT #2: To address your second comment:
From https://checkout.google.com/sell/orders a merchant can see the following information for each order:
Google Checkout Order Number
Total $ (or other currency) Amount
If they've yet been charged/pending/or other Credit Card/Other processing problems and current status.
Order Details (Include user name - which is Full Name - and App Name)
Additionally, within each order you get:
Customer's full name
Billing Address
Full email, not masked
Sold on, Charged on, Confirmed on Dates/Times
App name ID
So, Quite a bit information.