作者：Irfan Mohammed

在众多高质量的应用中，如今的开发者只能获取少量的用户，或者相反地，他们能够获取许多用户，但却不能从中赚得足够的收益。

如今的手机应用生态系统充满竞争，应用的成功率真的很低。Gartner预测在2018年以前，只有不足0.01%的应用能帮助开发者获取财政上的成功。研究同样表明，许多应用都是“僵尸应用”，即尽管用户下载了它们，但却有20%是用户在下载后只用了一次或直接将其删除的内容。对于应用开发者来说，这不仅代表较低的应用用户留存率，同时也意味着应用收益的下滑。

app store(from 91.com)

对于今天的应用开发者来说，什么才是真正的挑战？

应用开发者将所有的精力都专注于开发一款应用。投入许多汗水和泪水去创造一款应用（游戏邦注：从构思阶段到最终应用发行）。一旦应用发行了，应用开发者便迫切想知道自己的应用在应用商店中的表现。毫无疑问，如今的市场上有许多分析工具能够帮助开发者追踪各种参数。典型的分析工具将提供像下载量，注册用户量，所使用的设备，回合长度等信息。尽管这些信息很重要，但是却不能告诉应用开发者为什么应用表现得很好或者为什么它遭遇了失败。

开发者所获得的数据是关于人们是如何使用他们的应用而不是谁在使用它，这具有很大的区别。

如果只关心第一，应用开发者将会不断地追踪下载量然后只基于数据去衡量他们应用的成功。实际上，只追踪下载远远不够。尽管来自各家分析公司的数据能够帮助应用开发者追踪一款应用的发展，但这却并不代表大局。

问问自己你的分析工具是否能帮助你回答以下问题：

我的用户的兴趣是什么？

他们最常访问的地点是哪里？

他们是否沉浸于我的应用中？

他们使用了什么竞争应用？

他们花在其它应用上的时间有多少？

他们的统计资料是什么？

我的高价值用户的兴趣是什么？

有可能，你将不能获得这些问题的答案。很明显这里存在一个缺口。真正的用户理解在一款成功应用和一款失败应用之间是不同的。

为什么用户理解如此重要？

理解你的用户（游戏邦注：他们是谁以及他们真正喜欢的是什么）对于一款应用的成功至关重要。通过利用用户的统计资料，兴趣和竞争应用的使用，你便能够改变你所设置的应用内部信息，广告目标和用户获取。应用开发者同时也应该清楚他们的用户在应用内部的行为以及他们的兴趣以及应用外部的行为是如何影响他们在应用中的活动。想象如果你使用了有关用户的大量数据你将能够做些什么。这可能能够帮助你定制自己的应用内容，在适当的时间和环境下发送适当的信息，并使用具有较高针对性的广告。

直到现在，利用丰富的用户信息只适用于亚马逊和谷歌。大公司拥有技术和金融基础设施能够配置用户资料并相对应地瞄准他们。应用开发者还未清楚丰富的用户资料能够帮助自己的游戏提高用户粘性，获得更多用户并从中盈利。

解决方法是什么？

有一些公司提供了某种程度的用户资料。在选择供应商的时候，你会想要确保自己能够基于适当的价格获得适当的数据。

Personagraph便是一个不错的选择，它创造了一个复杂的用户了解平台。它是使用先进的机器学习算法和数据科学技术所创建起来的。一旦与你的应用相整合，Personagraph SDK便会开始通过各种资源，如应用，位置，社交媒体和点击等收集数据。所有的这些数据将在推理引擎上运行，并因此会创造一个独特且强大的用户资料，包括统计资料，兴趣，他们正在使用什么竞争应用，多长时间使用一次，以及用户最常访问的地点等信息。

手机生态系统是一个拥挤，复杂且充满竞争的空间。手机广告目标仍然处于新生阶段，所以我们迫切需要一个端对端服务能够处理手机生态系统中最迫切的挑战，并且是大公司和小型开发商都能够使用的服务。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转功，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Do you really know who’s using your app? You should!

Irfan Mohammed

Even among high-quality apps, it’s hardly unusual for developers today to acquire few users, or conversely, have plenty of users but not enough revenue or see their users go dormant.

The mobile app ecosystem today is extremely competitive and the success rate for apps is dismally low. Gartner predicts that by 2018 less than 0.01% of apps will be considered a financial success by their developers. Studies also show that a huge number of apps are zombies and of the apps that are actually being downloaded, about 20% are either used just once or deleted altogether. For app developers, this not only means low app user retention rates but also plummeting app revenues.

What is the real challenge for app developers today?

An app developer focuses all of his energy on developing an app. A lot of blood, sweat and tears go into building an app, from the ideation phase to the final app launch. As soon as an app is launched, app developers are anxious to find out how their app is doing in the app stores. No question, there’s a plethora of analytics tools in the market today that help developers track various metrics. A typical analytics tool will provide information such as number of downloads, number of registered users, devices used, and session length. While this information IS important, it does not tell the app developer WHY the app is doing well or why it is failing.

Developers are getting data on HOW people are using their app but not WHO is using it – and that’s an important distinction.

By focusing only on the first, app developers get caught up in tracking downloads and then measure the success of their app based on that data alone. In reality, solely tracking downloads isn’t enough anymore. While data provided to app developers by various analytics companies helps track the momentum of an app, it does not show the big picture.

Ask yourself if your analytics tool helps you answer the following:

What are my users’ interests?

What are their most frequently visited locations?

How engaged are they with my app?

What competing apps do they use?

How much time do they spend on other apps?

What are their demographics?

What are the interests of my high-value users?

Chances are, you won’t have answers to these questions. Clearly, there is a gap here. True user understanding could be the difference between a successful app and a failed one.

Why is user understanding so important?

Understanding your users – who they really are and what they’re really like – is crucial to the success of an app. By having access to your users’ demographics, interests and competitor app usage, you can dramatically alter the way you approach in-app messaging, ad targeting and user acquisition. App developers should also know how users are behaving inside their app and how their interests and out-of-app behavior affect their in-app activity. Imagine what you could do if you had access to rich data about your users. It might help you tailor your app content, push appropriate messages at the right time, in the right context and serve highly-targeted ads.

Till now, access to rich user information was only available to the Amazons and Googles of the world. Big corporations have the technical and financial infrastructure to profile their users and target them accordingly. App developers have not been privy to rich user profiles that could help them better engage, acquire and monetize.

What’s the solution?

There are a handful of companies who provide some level of user profiling. In choosing a provider, you want to ensure you’ll be able to get the right kind of data you’re looking for at the right price point.

Personagraph is one option which has created a sophisticated user understanding platform. It’s built using advanced machine learning algorithms and data science techniques. Once integrated with your app, the Personagraph SDK starts collecting data from various sources such as apps, location, social media, and clicks. All this data is then run through the inference engine and a unique, robust user profile is created including info on demographics, interests, what competitive apps are used, how often they’re used, and the users’ most visited locations.

The mobile ecosystem is a crowded, complicated and competitive space. Mobile ad targeting is still in a nascent phase and there is a pressing need for an end-to-end service that addresses the most pressing challenges of the mobile ecosystem and is accessible to big corporations and small developers alike.(source:venturebeat)