ARPDAU (Average Revenue Per Daily Active User)
The average revenue generated per daily active user, commonly used in app and game monetization.
What is ARPDAU?
ARPDAU stands for Average Revenue Per Daily Active User. It measures the average amount of revenue generated by each unique user who visits or uses a website or app on a given day. Originally popularized in mobile gaming and app monetization, ARPDAU has been adopted by web publishers as a complementary metric to RPM for evaluating per-user monetization efficiency.
ARPDAU provides a user-centric view of revenue rather than a page-centric or impression-centric view. This makes it particularly useful for understanding how effectively you monetize your audience as individuals, accounting for their complete engagement pattern across a day.
How It's Calculated
ARPDAU = Total Daily Revenue / Daily Active Users (DAU)
For example, if your site earned $200 on a day when 10,000 unique users visited:
ARPDAU = $200 / 10,000 = $0.02
This means each daily active user generated an average of 2 cents in ad revenue.
Why It Matters for Publishers
ARPDAU helps publishers understand the true per-user value of their audience, which is essential for evaluating traffic acquisition costs. If your ARPDAU is $0.05 and it costs $0.02 to acquire each user through paid channels, that acquisition is profitable. If acquisition costs exceed ARPDAU, you're losing money on paid traffic.
ARPDAU also highlights engagement-driven revenue differences. Power users who visit multiple pages and spend significant time generate much higher individual ARPDAU than one-time visitors. This insight helps prioritize retention and engagement strategies alongside raw traffic growth.
Tips for Optimization
- Segment ARPDAU by user type: Compare new vs. returning users, organic vs. paid, and different demographic segments to understand which user groups are most valuable.
- Track ARPDAU trends: Monitor ARPDAU over time to detect monetization improvements or degradation independent of traffic volume changes.
- Increase user engagement: More page views per user and longer sessions directly boost ARPDAU. Invest in content quality, internal linking, and user experience.
- Evaluate acquisition channels by ARPDAU: Not all traffic is equal. Social media users might have a $0.01 ARPDAU while search users average $0.08. Allocate acquisition budgets accordingly.
- Combine with lifetime value: ARPDAU multiplied by average days of user activity gives you a rough user lifetime value, useful for setting sustainable acquisition cost ceilings.