age/gender data in ios app google analytics

11
votes

I've already integrated my iOS app with google analytics SDK to track everything happening on the app and to get the useful reports that it generates. I've enabled the Demographics reports which let me see the ages/gender that are using the app but my question is how google can know the age and the gender of the user on an apple device. I'm assuming that on android they can know everything since the user has to enter his gmail account to manage his phone so they are able to get this information from his account but what about apple devices?How can they know this information?

I've checked this:Setting user Gender & Age in Google Analytics iOS SDK v3 but no one has replied on it.

EDITED: I've enabled the demographics and Interest Reports and I'm not seeing anything related to the age and gender under the reporting section!!

3
iosgoogle-analytics
I am consider using google analytics for our mobile game, so would like to know the answer and if it working in iOS/Android? Have you try Android and anything came out? - Richard Fu
@RichardFu, I didn't try it on Android but there it's easier to get this kind of info since we have to sign in using our GMail accounts where we probably entered our birthday.. - Maystro

3 Answers

6
votes

Before Google Analytics is available for Mobile, it is mostly used by websites. I was a web developer (before becoming a mobile developer) and I used Google Analytics on all my websites.

Google has its own technology and algorithm to track your gender and also age. I believe Google can not know 100% of the time, it can only guess by analysing your search pattern on Google, cookies on your web browser and etc.

I believe only Google knows the exact criteria on how to categorize a person under which age group and which gender.

I am not sure if age and gender is applicable on mobile. For web, it is easier to track and analyse based on the search pattern. But for mobile, it might be a bit tough. May be Google has figured out some patterns on how to categorize age group and gender on mobile as well.

Some resources that I found from random Google Search on this topic:-

  1. http://aladata.co.uk/google-analytics-demographic-reports-accurate-genders-ages/
  2. http://www.wired.com/2012/01/woman-who-loves-wombats/
  3. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/01/25/google_ad_preferences_manager_does_it_accurately_guess_your_age_and_gender_.html
3
votes

Google does not reveal how they capture the gender and age , in one of the google support forums Google says "We use an anonymous identifier linked to a customer's phone to remember which apps the person has used. We might associate the anonymous identifier with a demographic category based on the apps used on the device."

Mobile app demographics is in its beta stage , there is a lot more to come.

If you want to know more please go to https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2580383

2
votes

I am also have this same doubt and faced same issue. finally i contact with google analytics support team, they said clearly, after implementing this ios project

id<GAITracker> tracker = [[GAI sharedInstance] defaultTracker];
tracker.allowIDFACollection = YES;

google analytics automatically getting user Gender and Age range from iPhone browser cookies. like Safari etc..

See google supporting team replied answer below.

Answer : So As users browse our partner websites, Google stores an advertising cookie in a user's browser to understand the types of pages that user is visiting. For example, if a user browses many sports-related websites displaying AdSense ads or watches sports-related videos on YouTube, Google may associate a sports interest category with their cookie and show the user more sports-related ads. Similarly, if the sites that a user visits have a majority of female visitors (based on aggregated survey data on site visitation), we may associate the user’s cookie with the "female" demographic category. We may also use demographics from Google profiles.


so we no need to worry we just implement the demographics concept in ios & android app. see the report after some month it may generate the report. i am implemented till waiting to see the report. I'm sure it will work.

Next my question :

Ok thank you , but am integrating google analytics in my ios app, so if user browsing something in iphone safari browser means you are fetching demographics data from that cookies i am right ?


Google supporting team replied answer:

Absolutely correct.