16 Digital analytics facts that will make you rethink your benchmarks

Product teams need to do more than measure product performance. They also have to benchmark those results against industry peers.   

To help with that, Mixpanel's 2026 State of Digital Analytics report analyzed 3.7 trillion user events across eight industries and four global regions: 

The numbers reveal some unexpected insights: APAC apps are retaining users at rates that Western products rarely hit; a regulatory bottleneck has made North American iGaming one of the least engaging digital products on earth; and in entertainment, the shift to Gen AI creative tools may already be undermining the very engagement they were meant to boost. 

This article surfaces the 16 most surprising, counterintuitive, and benchmark-shifting findings from the report and what they mean for product teams who want to measure what actually matters.

AI generating instant text or a line of code can feel like magic. But behind the curtain, performance data is constantly measuring output and guiding model improvement. 

As AI products mature, analytics align user behavior with model performance, helping organizations identify which actions lead to retention, trust, and scalability. Analytics serve as the bridge between rapid innovation and consistent user value across every layer of the AI ecosystem.

North America was the only region that saw a drop in engagement, averaging 105.1 actions per user in 2025, 38% fewer than the previous year. 

At first glance, this could look like user enthusiasm for AI is saturated in the region, but our deeper analysis shows something different. Mature enterprise users prioritize efficiency, accomplishing multi-step tasks with fewer interactions. This is supported by the region’s low stickiness (21%) despite the largest volume of users (2 billion), which signals that users are prioritizing high efficiency via automated, background workflows.

LATAM has 11.7% week-one retention, a 104% increase YoY, and more than 2x every other region included in the report. 

Despite a smaller user base, users return quickly, suggesting strong immediate value and high motivation among early adopters.

B2B companies are using AI and product-led strategies to reshape how they operate and scale. Digital analytics serve as the engine, enabling them to identify friction points, optimize customer journeys, and benchmark performance across complex buyer cycles.

For B2B organizations, APAC numbers are significantly higher than other regions when it comes to engagement, stickiness, and retention, attributed in part to successful AI integration and automated workflows. 

The only exception is acquisition, where North America dominates with 3.2 billion total events by users compared to APAC’s 367.7 million.

Even though APAC organizations aren’t acquiring the most users, the numbers suggest that they’re making the most of the users they do acquire. On top of that, APAC acquisition is accelerating rapidly, signaling an emerging market with rapid AI adoption and efficient product-led, high-volume user conversion that could soon catch up in volume.

As retail prices surge and marketplaces expand, and AI-driven personalization reshapes customer journeys, data has become the core driver of growth for ecommerce. Analytics illuminate how users browse, convert, and stay loyal across all touchpoints.

Year over year, total events for ecommerce companies in North America went down 58%, a significant drop probably due to increasing customer acquisition costs (CAC). Instead, North American companies have shifted focus to customer retention and maximizing LTV, delivering more value to customers to encourage brand loyalty and repeat purchases.

Fintech is a sector where regulation meets innovation: Users expect frictionless and personalized experiences, whether they’re checking their bank balances or filing a claim, but regulatory and data protection requirements make it harder to deliver seamless experiences. More than ever, fintech leaders are using real-time analytics to eliminate friction and deliver fast, data-driven financial interactions.  

Actions per user in LATAM wealth management jumped from 191.8 to 1,500. This is the largest increase across fintech subindustries and reflects the rise of self-directed investing tools and expanded access for mass-affluent users.

Payment platforms are invisible when they work, and painful when they don’t. Users expect funds to move seamlessly from their wallet to the merchant’s ledger. This seamless expectation has forced rapid innovation in core infrastructure, making speed and trust essential.  

As payments blend deeper
into daily digital life, analytics uncover the patterns that shape global financial connectivity. 

New standards like ISO 20022 and adoption of A2A payment schemes drive colossal user growth in EMEA, with a +556% increase YoY.

Payments platforms had 34% stickiness in APAC in 2025, the highest of any region and a full 10 percentage points higher than second place North America (24%). 

Even with the highest DAU/MAU APAC was down 6% from the previous year, which suggests competing ecosystems are slowly pulling away users.

The media and entertainment sector covers a broad set of subindustries, from streaming platforms to social media apps, each measuring success differently. The insights surfaced in our report reflect those differences and show how audience behavior varies significantly by region across APAC, EMEA, North America, and LATAM.

The data showed that APAC entertainment products achieved 88% DAU/MAU stickiness, indicating a near-daily habit.  

This is likely driven by mobile-first ecosystems, highly localized serialized content (such as K-dramas and anime), and strong community features.

By contrast, Western markets lag significantly: North America sits at 21%, EMEA at 49%, and LATAM at 19%.

APAC’s high DAU/MAU stickiness ratio neatly demonstrates what the data has confirmed throughout the report: Habit formation is not a universal product challenge and depends heavily on content strategy and regional behavior norms.

According to our findings, social media stickiness jumped from 41% to 72% in just one year. Short-form content, live-shopping, and AI-personalized feeds on platforms like TikTok are forming a new class of daily digital habits across the region. 

In North America, on the other hand, social media stickiness dropped from 47% to 35% YoY. 

One likely factor is content saturation. As more AI-generated content floods platforms, novelty decreases, and user engagement can drop when content lacks originality or emotional resonance. 

Publishing retention numbers nearly tripled in LATAM, from 25% up to 72% weekly retention in 2025. Part of this massive increase is thanks to mobile-first expansion, along with a jump in subscription bundles for regional news.

It appears as though mobile-first distribution has finally broken through for a category that previously remained desktop-first, resulting in one of the largest YoY retention jumps in the entire report. 

The mobile gaming industry’s massive scale is powered by players' desires for daily rewards and progress, delivered through things like login bonuses or limited-time events. 

Mobile gaming engagement in LATAM collapsed -59% YoY, mostly attributed to content and audience mismatch. Players expect culturally relevant content in their native language. Poor language localization, ignoring local payment methods, and delayed App Store Optimization (ASO) likely all play a part in LATAM’s low mobile gaming numbers across the board. 

In contrast, our report showed that EMEA engagement soared +52% YoY, suggesting a strong sign of LiveOps and high-density, frequent in-game events and content cycles. 

In 2025, mobile gamers in North America took nearly 80 times more actions per user (845) than LATAM players (10.6). This stark difference reinforces how critical localization is both for sustained engagement and acquisition.

Mobile gaming providers in APAC saw one of the highest weekly retention rates anywhere in the report, 92.1%. Retention numbers this high are likely amplified from operators who have applied generative AI to speed up how quickly new users form sticky social behaviors.

The iGaming sector saw vast differences in metrics across regions, driven mostly by different legislative and compliance environments. Though users across the globe enjoy wagering during halftime, or the instant gratification of a personalized daily spin on their phones, the regulatory realities in different geographies create challenges that impact every step of the player journey, from acquisition to engagement and retention. 

Robust data science and in-depth analytics help iGaming providers offer personalized, engaging experiences, while also navigating complex compliance requirements. 

Our report shows that regulatory friction from Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements and deposit barriers suppressed player activity, resulting in markedly lower actions per user overall in the North American region.  

North American gamers lag far behind their EMEA counterparts in engagement (66.3 actions/user vs. 1,188 per user). On top of that, North American engagement dropped -44% YoY compared to 2024. 

iGaming in North America had the lowest week-one retention rate in the entire report at just 1.7%, a result directly tied to compliance friction reducing early activation. Mature AI personalization drives these retention rates, along with seamless live streaming and in-play wagering.

Without the regulatory friction that the North American iGaming industry faces, iGaming APAC increased retention rates +281% YoY. The APAC increase is attributed to high acquisition and strategic focus on transactional ease via alternative payment rails.

APAC iGaming also saw an impressive increase in acquisition numbers, jumping from 7.7M total events in 2024 to 55.6M in 2025. This demonstrates how frictionless mobile experiences can convert rapid acquisition into sustained retention, a key finding in the State of Digital Analytics report.

Benchmarking your performance against other organizations in your industry and geography tells you a lot of information about what you’re doing right and what you can improve. Get as granular as you can with all four stages of the customer journey (acquisition, engagement, stickiness, and retention). The more you know about your users, the better off you’ll be. 

These 16 findings are the surface of the data. The full report breaks down retention, engagement, and acquisition curves by region and industry, along with key metrics to track and recommendations. Download the full 2026 State of Digital Analytics report for complete access today.