AppMetrica: we have plans to implement basic analytics for stores

We talked with the project manager Alexander Lukin about what AppMetrica can do today, how it is better than Google Analytics and Flurry, as well as where it plans to move.

Hi! There are a lot of analytical services on the market now, a lot of different offers. At the same time, we all know that Yandex has been engaged in analytics for quite a long time. Even before the market was fed up with it. In this regard, the following question arises: why did AppMetrica appear only now, what was delaying?

Indeed, Yandex has been offering analytics for a long time, Yandex.Metrica, a web analytics system, has been around for a very long time. We have a solution for mobile analytics in 2013. It was, at that time, the first completely free, volume-independent and at the same time realtime mobile analytics. Then, in 2013, there was Google Analytics besides us – realtime and free, but with a limit on the amount of data. There was also Flurry, in which then reports had to wait for two days. There were paid solutions, like Localytics. And that’s all there was at that time. I can, of course, miss some less popular systems or startups that existed at that time. Therefore, we can say that Yandex was one of the first to enter the market of real mobile analytics.

But with the entry into the market of mobile tracking, we really were a little late – it’s true. We came out last of all the available solutions. Kochava was in front of us – released in 2014. All trackers have existed since 2013 and earlier. This includes MobileAppTracking, Adjust, and AppsFlyer.

This delay was due to the fact that we did not understand very well in which direction to move. All trackers were different: someone offered more flexibility, someone – ease of use, but less flexibility. As a result, we tried to take into account the best of our competitors when developing and assemble our product that would be as balanced as possible.

Okay, let’s move on. As I have already noted, there are a lot of offers on the market today. Why should a developer take a closer look at AppMetrica?

The specifics are important here. If we compare it with free solutions, then everything will come down to comparing with other services. These are Google Analytics and Flurry.

If we compare it with Google Analytics, then our reports and functionality are approximately the same. We also offer an SDK for all platforms, but we have no restrictions on the amount of data per month. It’s easy enough to run into the Google Analytics limit if the project starts gaining popularity. And we have no restrictions on sampling in reports. We allow you to balance the speed of construction and the accuracy of the report. That is, you can build a report on all the data without sampling, but it will take time. In Google Analytics, there is a maximum sampling bar, and to remove the restriction, you need to purchase Premuim, which is quite expensive.

If we compare it with Flurry, then this service has recently received realtime opportunities – at the very end of August, and it’s too early to draw any conclusions.

Plus, Google Analytics and Flurry are mobile analytics systems, but we offer tracking, behavioral analytics for users, and application stability control (collecting and analyzing crash logs) in one system, with one SDK.

My favorite question is cohort analysis. Why I ask: over the past year, a number of solutions have appeared that offer it. That is, with the help of which I can identify whales, break them into types and track their behavior. Is it possible to do this in AppMetrica?

You can segment any report with us, and by a huge number of parameters using filters – including the achievement of events. Now we are finishing the development of funnel reports and a graph of transitions by events. Funnels can also be saved and the rest of the reports can be segmented by them.

From interesting reports, we have an excellent cohort analysis, with which you can study the returnability, conversion to target events for different cohorts. We also have an excellent geography report. It is perhaps the best of all systems, because it allows you to build a hierarchy for any country in the world: country – region – city. Such a detailed report may be of interest for hyperlocal services, for example, delivery or service applications. We also have a report on the social system, in which we give out the knowledge of Yandex.Crypta about this user.

Going back a bit. One of your main advantages at the moment is complete free of charge. And what are you planning to earn money on?

Firstly, with the help of AppMetrica, we want to solve, first of all, the image task for Yandex, namely, to strengthen our brand – the Yandex brand – as a technology brand for mobile developers. Before that, we had very few offers for mobile developers – SDK maps, SpeechKit, and so on. But we were able to offer something unifying, analytics, only now. So, I repeat, this is also an image task.

Secondly, we use this solution ourselves, although in fact the share of Yandex applications in the volume processed by AppMetrica is already less than a third.

Thirdly, now the product is free and it will remain so. Tracking and analytics will be free, regardless of the amount of data. But with a certain degree of probability, we will add features that we will monetize directly. What these features are, I can’t say yet. When they come out, then we’ll tell them.

What’s up with the SDK now?

We have an SDK for Windows Phone, for desktop Windows, for Android and iOS, and we also now have a Unity plugin that is in high demand. Next, we plan to create plugins and SDKs for other technologies – Xamarin, PhoneGap.

And will you do Unreal?

I can’t say for sure yet.

Do you work with third-party analysts?

Yes, medium and large companies often use their own solutions. So, if you already have some kind of analytics consumption process within the company or you have your own internal analytical solutions, then our API allows you to take both aggregated and raw data and build all reports on your side. Also, this raw data can be used for retargeting in the future.

Here’s another question: Yandex.Metrica has a catalog of sites, this is a kind of top citation. Don’t want to do something like that, but for apps?

The idea is interesting, we have it stopped a little with one of the development plans, namely, the addition of basic analytics on the stores. Since we want to develop AppMetrica towards creating a consolidated solution for all marketing activities related to the application, then, of course, it would be interesting to include a comparison with competitors’ applications here. So far, we have plans to implement basic analytics on stores, which would allow us to track changes in positions in the tops and categories of the store, track comments and so on.

And the last question: Google has its own courses in analytics, they even issue diplomas. Will Yandex have something similar?

In fact, AdWords and Google Analytics are really so complex that courses are needed there – this is a well-known fact. Yandex.Metrica also has a number of courses that allow you to master some secret knowledge, but they are more related to our courses on Yandex.Yandex. Direct. As for AppMetrica, here we focus on building up the knowledge base around the project so that the user could easily deal with the service himself.

By the way, we already have a section on tech.yandex.ru where the best use cases are collected, there is a general documentation section, and soon we will launch our blog, in which we will talk about working with AppMetrica and mobile analytics in general.

Thanks for the interview!