[MUSIC PLAYING]
SPEAKER: AskFirebase 7, scene, 1, take 1.
Marker.
DAVID EAST: What's up, everybody?
Welcome back to another episode of #AskFirebase.
And today is a great episode, because we
have the one, the only, Fontaine Foxworth, who works
on the Firebase Analytics team.
Fun fact about Fontaine, she has a NCAA championship ring
in men's volleyball.
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: And of my favorite things about--
DAVID EAST: Oh, oh, and also, she
is a prize-winning crocheter.
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Uh, I would love tell you--
DAVID EAST: And also, one more thing.
She is a state champion mathlete.
Fontaine Foxworth, everyone.
So we got a lot of great questions
this week on Twitter, Stack Overflow, and YouTube, all
with the #AskFirebase.
And they're all Firebase Analytics specific this week.
And if you want your question ans--
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Fun fact about Dave, Dave
actually used to be left-handed, but he no longer is.
DAVID EAST: You win, Fontaine, you win.
So, Fontaine, should we dive in?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Yeah, let's do it.
BOTH: Question time!
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: So the first question
that we got submitted was from Hagai on Twitter.
And Hagai wrote, "we're building an Android SDK.
We need analytics for us and for our customers.
Does it make sense to use Firebase Analytics?"
So certainly.
Your customers should definitely be using Firebase Analytics.
It's built for app developers.
But we also know that sometimes app developers
are sensitive to adding too many SDKs to their app.
So you could also integrate with Google Tag Manager.
So that way, they're not adding an additional SDK to their app,
but rather, they're using this common data layer that's
being collected by Firebase Analytics
and then sending it to any of the relevant third parties
that need that data.
So you could still have your cake and eat it too.
DAVID EAST: I love eating cake.
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Thanks, Hagai,
for submitting that question.
DAVID EAST: Super awesome.
BOTH: More questions.
DAVID EAST: So this next question comes in from Russ.
And Russ asks, so we had Google Analytics for apps for a while,
so why do we have Firebase Analytics?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: So when we were talking to app developers,
many of them had Google Analytics in their app,
but they weren't necessarily using
it to make decisions for their app.
And we found it's because they didn't feel like it
was truly built for mobile.
And so when we set out to build Firebase Analytics,
we knew we wanted to build something
that was explicitly for mobile.
So it's a lot simpler.
It's very event-based.
It's no longer revolving around page views.
We also have metrics that are specific to mobile,
things like ARPU or MAU.
These are terms and concepts that
come up a lot in mobile tracking but aren't
as common on the web.
And another thing, on Google Analytics,
it all revolves around session-base tracking.
But when we were talking to our app developers,
they really wanted to get more of a notion
of user-base tracking rather than session-base tracking.
So we really pivoted to focus on user metrics,
focus on mobile metrics, and really bring
more of a mobile experience to our Analytics product.
DAVID EAST: Great question, Russ.
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Thank you, Russ.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
By my calculations, it's time for another question.
The next question that we had was submitted by Cameron.
And he wrote in, "I see some highlights that Firebase also
does marketing analytics and ad tracking.
What do you mean by that?"
What we mean is some analytics tools are just
tracking what's happening inside your app--
how many level ups a user might accomplish,
or how long they're sticking around during a given session.
But with marketing analytics, what we're trying to bring in
is an understanding of how users got to your app
in the first place.
What were the channels or sources that were actually
driving them to your app?
Was it push notifications?
Was it a particular ad?
Was it a link that they clicked on in an email?
All of these things, they should be able to get insights into,
whether you're a PM or a marketer,
so you're not just looking at what's happening in the app,
but you can see how the users got there as well.
Thanks for that question, Cameron.
[SPEAKING SPANISH]
DAVID EAST: Si.
So this next question comes from Mai.
And Mai asks, "what makes for Firebase Analytics unique?"
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Excellent question.
So when we set out to build Firebase Analytics a while ago,
we asked developers what tools are they using for analytics.
And what we would hear was people
were listing out four or five different types
of analytics solutions that they were
using to do different things.
So maybe they had cross reporting, push notification
analytics, behavioral analytics, marketing analytics.
Each one of these were often logging very similar events
but being used by different people in the organization.
So Firebase Analytics is unique, because we're
trying to tackle a lot of different types of analytics
in a single tool.
So it doesn't matter what role in the organization you are.
Anybody should be able to do what
they need to do in Firebase Analytics,
whether you're a developer, product manager, or a marketing
manager.
Great question, Mai.
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BOTH: More questions.
DAVID EAST: So this next question comes in from Steve.
And Steve asks, "can Firebase Analytics
bring in data from the AdMob and Play?"
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Yes, actually.
In fact, we already have integrations with both AdMob
and Play.
If you go into the Account Settings part of Firebase,
you can actually link to AdMob and link to Play.
Now, we want to make sure that you
have all of your data in a single centralized place.
Even today, you can see some of your in-app purchase data
that's being processed by Google Play showing up
in Firebase Analytics.
So that's just the beginning of a lot of exciting plans
that we have to continue to bring in additional metrics
into Firebase, so that you no longer
have to be going to several different interfaces
to actually get at the data you want.
DAVID EAST: So if I just have an AdMob account, just
like click button, link it, and just--
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Yes, exactly.
DAVID EAST: --done?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: That's what's up.
DAVID EAST: Great question, Steve.
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BOTH: Next question!
DAVID EAST: So this next question
comes from Joe on Twitter.
And Joe asks, how does Firebase Analytics
come up with gender data?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Hm, it's a pretty good question.
So it's actually all an approximation.
Remember, Google is an advertising company.
So we've got a pretty good understanding of how,
through all these ads that are being shown across thousands
of apps in the industry, how users are actually
behaving and navigating through these apps.
So we're able to approximate different demographic data,
like age and interests.
So you might notice it doesn't line up
one to one with whatever's in your own internal database.
But that's, of course, because that's not
what we're reporting on.
It's the behavioral analytics that we're
able to approximate based on what we can understand
about what users are doing.
Great question, Joe.
DAVID EAST: And that was a really good answer.
You want your question answered, make
sure to reach out to us on Twitter,
Stack Overflow, and YouTube.
Just use the #AskFirebase.
So that's all, and we will see you next week, same time on--
BOTH: #AskFirebase.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAVID EAST: Fontaine, what is 0 divided by 5?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: 0.
DAVID EAST: What's 0 divided by 100?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: 0.
DAVID EAST: What is 0 divided by--
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: It's 0.
DAVID EAST: OK, but what's 0 divided by 7?
FONTAINE FOXWORTH: Uh, I think I'd like to phone a friend.
Can you help me out, Gabe?
SPEAKER: Go for it!
GABE: Infinity plus 1.