MAU Vs. DAU In the Social Media Space

If you’ve been reading this blog, then you’ve likely come across the terms “MAU” and “DAU“. You might have an idea of what they mean but maybe it’s still unclear.

No worries! I’m here to shed light on these terms, what they represent, and how social media companies use them to showcase their platforms’ performance within a given timeframe.

Let’s start!

What Is MAU?

MAU stands for Monthly Active Users and it represents the number of unique users who use a product/service over a 30-day window.

For instance, let’s take Facebook’s Monthly Active Users as of April 2023 – 2.989 billion.

This number shows that 2.989 billion unique individuals used Facebook as of April 2023. By “unique“, I’m referring to the fact that multiple accounts belonging to the same person aren’t taken into account.

Only the individuals themselves matter, irrespective of how many accounts they possess.

MAU is often described as a “key KPI (key performance indicator” for a social networking company because it shows how popular it is within a month.

The higher the MAU, the more people that company’s service/product has.

Here are other aspects you might glean from a company’s MAU number:

The efficacy of their marketing campaigns
The level of present and potential customer experience
The engagement of the product/service with the target audience
The growth of the company’s audience over time

To calculate the MAU, you divide the sum of every month’s unique active users by 12 and you obtain an average. That average is the MAU.

Remember that the MAU does not show the number of monthly active users in a specific month. Instead, it shows the monthly average after you divide the sum of every month’s MAU by 12.

This is a much more accurate metric compared to simply looking at 1 month’s monthly active users because it looks at the entire year.

What Is DAU?

DAU stands for Daily Active Users and it showcases the number of unique users that interact with your product/service within a 24-hour window.

You can calculate the DAU by assessing how many unique users are active on the platform within those 24 hours. That’s your DAU.

Or, you can add up the sum of all the daily active users for 30 days and then divide it by 30. That’ll result in an average DAU that’s more accurate than a common DAU.

However, the DAU is usually less reliable than the MAU, though. That’s because the reference point is on a smaller timescale (a day vs. a month).

For this reason, most social media companies rely on the Monthly Active Users (MAU) metric in their quarterly or yearly performance reports. That’s the best indicator of a platform’s healthy performance.

DAU/MAU Ratio. What Is It?

When we combine the MAU and DAU, we obtain the DAU/MAU ratio, which is the most effective key performance metric out of all three.

The DAU/MAU ratio represents the number of daily active users compared to the number of monthly active users reflected in a percentage.

Here’s how you calculate the DAU/MAU ratio:

Divide the DAU by the MAU
Multiple by 100

So, let’s say the DAU for Facebook is 2,500 and the MAU is 5,000. Dividing 2,500 by 5,000 gives you 0.5 as the DAU/MAU ratio.

Then, you will divide 0.5 by 100 and you’ll get 50%. This means that 50% of all the people using Facebook in a month are using it daily.

The DAU/MAU ratio is best used to showcase the retention rate of a given product/service. It shows how many of the users on the app are using the app daily.

For instance, if the DAU/MAU ratio is 50%, it means that, out of a 30-day month, the users are using your platform for at least 15 days continuously.

I hope this article has shed some light on how social media companies use terms such as DAU, MAU, and the DAU/MAU Ratio.

Comment below for any questions and see you on the next one!