Traffic & Channels
Retention Rate
The share of users still active after a given period — differs sharply by vertical and game type.
Retention rate is the share of users still active after a given period — day 1, day 7, day 30 — measured from install, registration or first deposit. It differs sharply by vertical and product type: casual game and casino app retention curves look nothing alike, and even within iGaming, slots and sports betting retain differently.
For buyers, retention is the metric advertisers quietly judge traffic by: RevShare income depends on it directly, and CPA deals get payouts cut or traffic rejected when retention undercuts the advertiser's baseline. In-app campaigns are optimized on retention per bundle or sub-source, since installs are cheap and worthless without returning users. Motivated and incentivized traffic always betrays itself here — installs galore, day-7 retention near zero.
In buyer speech
“The network loves our volume but day-7 retention rate is 4% below their baseline — trim the two worst sub-sources before they cut the payout.”