age/gender data in ios app google analytics
google-analytics, ios
Solution
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:-
- http://aladata.co.uk/google-analytics-demographic-reports-accurate-genders-ages/
- http://www.wired.com/2012/01/woman-who-loves-wombats/
- http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/01/25/google_ad_preferences_manager_does_it_accurately_guess_your_age_and_gender_.html
Problem
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!!