Journal · 14 Jan 2026

Adoption depth is not DAU

Daily active users will congratulate any control you nail to the home tab. Depth asks whether the job was finished more than once, on purpose.

DAU is a company-level pulse. It is almost never the right grain for Feature Adoption Analytics. A feature can raise DAU by adding a noisy badge and still fail first value. Conversely, a monthly close tool can look “dead” on DAU and still be deeply adopted by the ten people whose job is monthly close.

Depth, in the language we use at the studio

We define depth as repeat completion of first value inside a window that matches the job. For a transfer reminder, that might be two completed reminder-attributed transfers in fourteen days among users who were exposed. For a reconciliation export, it might be one export per close cycle across three cycles. Copying a “weekly active feature user” definition from a consumer social app onto a B2B export is how serious tools get killed by accident.

Depth also requires a denominator you can defend. Exposed users, not all registered accounts. If only 8% of accounts could have seen the feature, reporting depth against 100% of accounts will make a healthy niche tool look like a failure.

The home-tab trap

Home-tab placement inflates both DAU-like feature metrics and shallow taps. In a 2025 payments case we published with permission, reminder taps looked healthy because the control sat on home. Completion attributed to the reminder did not. The squad moved the reminder behind opt-in. Tap volume fell. Completion among opted-in users rose. DAU of the home tab barely moved. That is the point: company DAU was the wrong scoreboard for the decision.

What to put in an exec pack instead

One uptake map. Exposure definition. First-value rate among exposed. Depth rate among those who hit first value. Quiet-death status. Known tracking holes. If an executive demands a single number, give them first-value among exposed and say out loud what it is not. Cloudeventgrid will not teach you how to hide a weak feature inside a DAU uptick. We will teach you how to survive the meeting when you refuse.

See the practice page or the payments case.