Active DAU and Active MAU

An Active User is defined as a client who has total_daily_uri >= 5 URI for a given date.

  • Dates are defined by submission_date (not by client activity date).
  • A client's total_daily_uri is defined as their sum of scalar_parent_browser_engagement_total_uri_count for a given date1.

Active DAU (aDAU) is the number of Active Users on a given day.

Active MAU (aMAU) is the number of unique clients who have been an Active User on any day in the last 28 days. In other words, any client that contributes to aDAU in the last 28 days would also contribute to aMAU for that day. Note that this is not simply the sum of aDAU over 28 days, since any particular client could be active on many days.

Active WAU (aWAU) is the number of unique clients who have been an Active User on any day in the last 7 days. Caveats above for aMAU also apply to aWAU.

To make the time boundaries more clear, let's consider a particular date 2019-01-28. The aDAU number assigned to 2019-01-28 should consider all main pings received during 2019-01-28 UTC. We cannot observe the full data until 2019-01-28 closes (and in practice we need to wait a bit longer since we are usually referencing derived datasets like clients_daily that are updated once per day over several hours following midnight UTC), so the earliest we can calculate this value is on 2019-01-29. If plotted as a time series, this value should always be plotted at the point labeled 2019-01-28. Likewise, aMAU for 2019-01-28 should consider a 28 day range that includes main pings received on 2019-01-28 and back to beginning of day UTC 2019-01-01. Again, the earliest we can calculate the value is on 2019-01-29.

For quick analysis, using firefox_desktop_exact_mau28_by_dimensions is recommended. Below is an example query for getting MAU, WAU, and DAU for 2018 using firefox_desktop_exact_mau28_by_dimensions.

SELECT
  submission_date,
  SUM(visited_5_uri_mau) AS visited_5_uri_mau,
  SUM(visited_5_uri_wau) AS visited_5_uri_wau,
  SUM(visited_5_uri_dau) AS visited_5_uri_dau
FROM
  telemetry.firefox_desktop_exact_mau28_by_dimensions
WHERE
  submission_date_s3 >= '2018-01-01'
  AND submission_date_s3 < '2019-01-01'
GROUP BY
  submission_date
ORDER BY
  submission_date

For analysis of dimensions not available in firefox_desktop_exact_mau28_by_dimensions, using clients_last_seen is recommended. Below is an example query for getting aMAU, aWAU, and aDAU by app_version for 2018 using clients_last_seen.

SELECT
  submission_date,
  app_version,
  -- days_since_* values are always < 28 or null, so aMAU could also be
  -- calculated with COUNT(days_since_visited_5_uri)
  COUNTIF(days_since_visited_5_uri < 28) AS visited_5_uri_mau,
  COUNTIF(days_since_visited_5_uri < 7) AS visited_5_uri_wau,
  -- days_since_* values are always >= 0 or null, so aDAU could also be
  -- calculated with COUNTIF(days_since_visited_5_uri = 0)
  COUNTIF(days_since_visited_5_uri < 1) AS visited_5_uri_dau
FROM
  telemetry.clients_last_seen
WHERE
  submission_date_s3 >= '2018-01-01'
  AND submission_date_s3 < '2019-01-01'
GROUP BY
  submission_date,
  app_version
ORDER BY
  submission_date,
  app_version

For analysis of only aDAU, using clients_daily is more efficient than clients_last_seen. Getting aMAU and aWAU from clients_daily is not recommended. Below is an example query for getting aDAU for 2018 using clients_daily.

SELECT
  submission_date_s3,
  COUNT(*) AS visited_5_uri_dau
FROM
  telemetry.clients_daily
WHERE
  scalar_parent_browser_engagement_total_uri_count_sum >= 5
  -- In BigQuery use yyyy-MM-DD, e.g. '2018-01-01'
  AND submission_date_s3 >= '20180101'
  AND submission_date_s3 < '20190101'
GROUP BY
  submission_date_s3
ORDER BY
  submission_date_s3
1

Note, the probe measuring scalar_parent_browser_engagement_total_uri_count only exists in clients with Firefox 50 and up. Clients on earlier versions of Firefox won't be counted as an Active User (regardless of their use). Similarly, scalar_parent_browser_engagement_total_uri_count doesn't increment when a client is in Private Browsing mode, so that won't be included as well.