Unlike websites, where volume, often measured by pageviews, is normally the primary metric, app success is defined by habit, loyalty, and direct relationships.

Measuring this requires a different mindset. You aren’t just tracking hits, you are measuring the health of a dedicated audience.

This guide outlines the critical metrics every publisher should track, the analytics tools available directly within Pugpig, and how we use data to drive platform success.

1. The primary metrics: Engagement and retention

In the app world, a smaller, highly engaged audience is infinitely more valuable than a large, transient one. Your analytics should start with four basic metrics:

The number of active users (DAU / MAU)

• What it is: Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU).
• Why it matters: The ratio of these two numbers (DAU/MAU) is the standard proxy for “stickiness.” If you have 10,000 monthly users and 2,000 visit daily, your stickiness is 20%.
• The Benchmark:
  • Good: 15-20% stickiness.
  • Great: >25%.
  • Note: News apps naturally have higher stickiness than monthly magazines. If you are a monthly publication, focus on weekly active users instead of daily to get a fair picture of habit.

Frequency & engaged days

• What it is: The number of times a user opens the app (sessions per user) and the number of distinct days they visit in a month (engaged days).
• Why it matters: Frequency is one of the best predictors of subscription renewal. Many publishers have seen how increasing the recency and frequency of user visits are directly tied to subscription growth and retention. You want to build a regular habit.
• The Pugpig Benchmark:
  • The average news app sees around 15 sessions per user per month
  • But top performers can see anywhere up to 40 sessions per user per month.
  • If your average user visits fewer than 5 times a month, you are likely not part of their regular routine. Consider how you can increase the frequency of their engagement.

Session duration & depth

• What it is: How long they spend in the app (avg. session duration) and how much they consume (screens per session).
• Why it matters: Together this proves value as the longer they're spending and the more screens and articles they're viewing, the higher the chance that they're engaging with the content.
• The Pugpig Benchmark:
  • The average news apps have an average session duration of around 8 minutes, but top performers can be anywhere up to 23-24 minutes on average.
  • Magazine apps often see lower frequency but extremely high depth (reading 5+ articles in one sitting).
  • Using these two metrics in tandem allows for you to get a comprehensive view of app engagement.

Retention Rate (Day 1 vs. Day 30)

• What it is: The percentage of users who return to the app after their first install.
• Why it matters: It is significantly harder to acquire a new user than to keep an existing one.
• Appsflyer benchmark for news apps:
  • Day 1: Average is ~32% for iOS and ~26% for Android
  • Day 30: Average is ~13% for iOS and ~10% for Android
  • When looking to improve your app retention it's important to consider the onboarding journey and push notification strategy. 

2. Measuring content performance

Don’t just measure volume (most viewed). Measure value (what drives habits).

• Completion rate: Are users reading to the end?
  • Bolt Capability: Pugpig Bolt has the ability to track scroll depth at pre-determined increments via the BoltScroll event. Also, if there's a recirculation module at the bottom of the article this is also tracked via BoltRecriculationModuleTap.
  • Action: Identify which types of articles get >75% scroll depth or significant engagement with the module. Consider making these content types more prominent in the app.
• Format Success: Compare article views with audio listens, puzzle plays and video views
  • Bolt Capability: There are specific events for engagement with the different content types.
  • Insight: Data shows that game/puzzle users often read 31% more articles per session. If you have puzzles, track the crossover: What % of puzzle players also read a news story in the same session?

3. Understanding the Pugpig Bolt analytics spec

The Pugpig Analytics Specification is the reference for all user tracking available in Pugpig Bolt apps, detailing the events, dimensions and screen views sent to analytics platforms like Google Analytics 4 and Mixpanel. It provides a comprehensive dictionary of pre-configured tracking events that cover the entire user lifecycle, from initial app install (BoltAppFirstOpen) and onboarding, to deep content engagement (scroll depth, shares, audio/video playback) and finally to commercial actions like hitting a paywall (BoltPaywallDisplayed) or completing a subscription.

Beyond simple event tracking, the specification defines the rich metadata (dimensions) attached to every action, allowing you to segment your audience by subscription status, push notification opt-in or content preferences (e.g. specific authors or sections). It also outlines how to extend this default tracking with custom dimensions.

4. Leveraging Pugpig Advanced and Basic Insights

Pugpig Basic Insights (Available to all Bolt customers)
Basic Insights provides an out-of-the-box dashboard that requires zero configuration.

• What you get: A pre-configured view of your app’s health
• Key Metrics Included: User stats (active users, sessions per user), content engagement (top articles/timelines) and tech specs (OS breakdown, push opt-ins).

Pugpig Advanced Insights
For publishers who need to slice data by custom segments or build bespoke funnels, Advanced Insights unlocks the full power of Mixpanel.

• What you get: Full access to the raw data and the ability to build custom reports, funnels, and cohorts.
• Key Capabilities: Build subscription funnels to visualise paywall drop-off, run cohort analysis on specific marketing campaigns, or segment readers by their favourite authors

5. Acting on the data: An example of health check checklist

Once a month, ask these three questions of your data using your Insights dashboard:

1. “Where is the leak?” Look at your drop-off rates. Are users installing the app but never opening a second article?
   1. Fix: Improve your app onboarding flow.
2. “Who are my zombies?” Use Advanced Insights to create a segment of subscribers who haven’t opened the app in 28 days. These are high-risk for churn.
   1. Action: Send a targeted re-engagement push campaign.
3. “What is driving engagement?” Find the one feature that your most loyal 10% of users share. Is it the daily crossword? The morning briefing? The audio playlist button?
   1. Action: Make this feature more prominent within the app by moving it to the home screen, leveraging tooltips or running a push notification campaign.

Need help upgrading to Advanced Insights or interpreting your Basic dashboard? Contact Pugpig Consulting Services at info@pugpig.com