The problem
At the moment, both app stores APIs provide the revenue data (proceeds, in Apple's case) in the buyer's currency rather than on your own currency.
That makes it difficult for app owners to understand how much money they're actually making, specially for global apps with massive scale.
The solution we came up with
Our idea was simple: create a Google Sheet with all existing currencies and their exchange rates and blend it with our connector. That would allow us to calculate the approximate amount in US dollars, Euros or Brazilian Reais (it can be any currency actually, but we started with those three).
We tried and it worked so now we're sharing it with you!
Bur before that: what's the current alternative?
You could use the Earnings report from Google Play. There you'll find a couple of dimensions to convert your sales revenue into your own currency:
buyerCurrency: currency in which your user bought your in-app purchase.
merchantCurrency: the currency in which you're paid, as setup on your Google Play account.
This works just fine, but there's a catch: as stated on Google's official documentation, "Earnings reports contain invoices raised in the prior month". This means that if you're looking for low-latency data, the Earning reports isn't for you as you'd have to wait the whole month to see your revenue.
Also, that kind of solves the problem for Google Play apps, but for App Store apps you'd still have a problem.
🤔 So, how does our solution look like?
Bellow you can see a demo of what that looks like in real life. It contains:
Daily proceeds in US dollars (total and also by country)
Top markets by revenue
A table where you can see how the data is transformed from developerProceeds to USD
👇
Pretty cool, isn't it? This is example was built using App Store metrics, but it's the same for Google Play. Or, even better, you can see both under the same report 🙂
Google Play implementation guide
Open our Global Currency Exchange Rates sheet and go to File → "Add a Shortcut to Drive" (you need to be logged in on a Google Account)
ps: more details on this data source at this page.
Then go to Data Studio data sources, select Google Sheets as a data source and pick the sheet you just opened.
Pro tip: uncheck the "Include hidden and filtered cells" so you don't import unnecessary columns.
Connect your Google Play account and choose the Sales report. Then click on "Create a Report".
Pro tip: rename your Data Source, it'll help you a lot later, trust me. Personally, I use the following naming convention: "GPC - Sales" (GPC=Google Play Console).
Go to "Manage Blended data" on the top menu
Now blend your Sales Report with the Exchange Rates sheet:
⚠️ avoid adding dimensions you won't use on the chart as it can cause issues in the way how Google displays the data
Now we need to create a calculated field called "US amount"
First, "Create a Field" under the "Metric" menu on the right (you have to select a chart first) with the formula:
changedAmount*Exchange Rate to USD
It'll look this this:
Now you can build any chart you want with that data!
Table example with the amount per sku and product type, translated into USD in the final column.
App Store implementation guide
If you haven't already, add our App Store connector as a new data source on Data Studio.
Pro tip: rename your Data Source, it'll help you a lot later, trust me. I personally use the following naming convention: "GPC - Sales" (GPC=Google Play Console).
Go to "Manage Blended data" on the top menu
Now blend your App Store data source with the Exchange Rates sheet using the formula bellow:
⚠️ avoid adding dimensions you won't use on the chart as it can cause issues in the way how it displays the data
Ok, we're close! Now we just have to calculate the total proceeds and then translate it into US dollars:
First, create a Calculated Field using the formula bellow. This will give you the your Total Proceeds:
On Apple, the DeveloperProceeds are per item so you need to multiply it by the number os Units sold in order to see what what the full amount received
😉 Pro tip: you can use "CustomerPrice" instead of "DeveloperProceeds" to calculate your gross revenue
Now you can create another metric to calculate the Total Proceeds in USD:
Now you can build any chart you want with it!
What's next?
Now that your data is blended, you can build your own visualizations. Here's a few ideas:
Chart with your daily revenue in USD
Then maybe compare that month-over-month or year-over-year to see how you're doing over time
Revenue per skuId, so you can see which products are driving the most revenue
If you sell both nornal in-app purchases subscriptions, maybe you want to have a stacked are chart so you can see how's product sales mix evolving over time
A treemap with your revenue per skuId
A world map ordered by revenue
And so on. This actually also opens new opportunities to blend your data and create even more powerful dashboards. We're curious to see what you'll do with it 🙂