Date Ranges: Define Audience vs. Create Report

Previous Reading: Audience Reporting Walk-through :: Creating an audience :: Running Reports :: Absolute vs. Relative Reports

Overview

To understand the nuances with user-level dates it's helpful to start with the concept of reporting. Defining an audience is a discrete, separate step from running a report of user performance. So you need to define discrete date windows when you create an audience and then again when you view user performance by running a report. This is simply because you may want to define users by their behavior during one timeframe, then see their performance over a different timeframe.

This important level of detail can be confusing when first using Audience Reporting – but once mastered it can uncover powerful insights of your users.

Example: Define an Audience

When you create an audience, you can restrict dates on users that meet the criteria you’ve defined. In the example below, the users have completed a “DailyCompleted” Event within the last 7 days.

Users who’ve fired at least one DailyCompleted event in the last 7d

This means the Audience Builder will find all users who meet these criteria. In the example below, Users A and C would be a part of the audience. User B, would not be included.

An audience report run over the last 7 days.

Now when you Run a Report, you can specify a different timeframe to measure the performance of users A & C.

Absolute Report: defining an audience by activity but reporting over a different timeframe

This is an important feature in Absolute Reporting, you can define an audience using a different timeframe than your report. This means you can measure a user's performance over an earlier timeframe than the behavior or action you're using to define the audience. In the example below we’re actually choosing a reporting date frame that precedes the window of the audience definition.

Step 3: Run a Relative Report on a different timeframe

For Relative Reporting, user performance starts at install.

• Restrict user install dates limit the Audience Users to have installed within the timeframe. Users whose install date falls out of the defined timeframe will not be included in the report.

• Days in Lifecycle indicate how many days will be shown in the report (0-14)

So in the below case, User A would show the event at 14d of activity, while User C would only have activity on the first 3d after their install.

In a relative report, both user A & User C will have the same day 0.

User C's action will be measured on day 3, User A on day 14.