Data freshness and time zone support

UTC time is constant and doesn't have summer/winter times. 

Hemispheres

• Eastern: Time zones are designated as UTC+ are those located to the east of UTC. 
• Western: Time zones designated as UTC - are those located to the west of UTC.

App-specific time zone

You can set an app-specific time zone. This means that the data is grouped into days using local time rather than UTC.

Example: 

Beijing: If the app-specific time zone is set to Beijing (UTC +8 ) then the day starts at 16:01 UTC and ends at 16:00 UTC the following day. 

Los Angeles: If the app-specific time zone is set to Los Angeles (UTC -8) then the day starts at 08:01 UTC and ends at 08:00 UTC the following day.

Time-zone guidelines

• Align your app-specific time zone with the time zone you set for other attribution service providers such as Google and Facebook.
• If you have more than one app, the best practice is to set all apps to the same time zone. To view an app time zone, go to Configuration > App setting. 
• Most reports and data extraction tools support app-specific time zones. This includes multi-app reports if all apps are set to the same app-specific time zone.

Daily processing 

Some reports are processed once a day, this is referred to as daily freshness or daily processing. These are the principles of daily processing:

• Data belonging to a specific day, for example, Monday, is collected in a bucket. The day begins at 00:01 and ends at 24:00 using the app-specific time. 
• Data received up to two hours after midnight is included in the day's bucket. Data received up to 02:00 on Tuesday is included in Monday's bucket.
• At 02:00 local time, the bucket is closed, and no more data can be added to it.
• Data received after 0200 is placed in the next available bucket, irrespective of the event date.
• Now it is time to process the data in the Monday bucket that was closed at 0200 Tuesday local time. Data in the closed bucket undergoes daily processing.
• Now Daily processing of the closed bucket begins two hours after midnight UTC irrespective of the app-specific time zone. For simplicities sake, we state that processing starts at midnight UTC. This means that depending on the local time zone the bucket needs to wait, until midnight UTC, before processing begins.

Eastern hemisphere and UTC time zone:

• Up to 11 hours can pass from the time the day ends (local time) until processing begins. For example:
  • Beijing (UTC+8): Need to wait eight hours before processing begins
  • Berlin (UTC +1): Need to wait one hour before processing begins
  • UTC: No waiting time. 
• Depending on the report type the data is available 8-20 hours after the start of the processing For example, Beijing data is available from 16:00 local time. Berlin data is available from 09:00.

Western hemisphere:

• Up to 23 hours can pass from the time the day ends until processing begins. For example:
  • Los Angeles (UTC -8): Need to wait 16 hours before processing begins
  • New York (UTC -5): Need to wait 19 hours before processing begins
• Depending on the report type the processed data is available 8-20 hours after the start of the processing begins. For example,  Los Angeles, data is available from  00:01 local time two days after the event. New York data is available from 03:01 local time two days after the event.
• Example:
  • Events take place on Monday Los Angeles time (UTC -8), the daily processing begins at midnight UTC Tuesday. This is Los Angeles Tuesday 16:01.
  • Eight hours later, on Wednesday 00:01 Los Angeles time the data processing is complete.  In practical terms, data from Monday is available to advertisers in Los Angeles when they begin work on Wednesday morning.

These forms of data and/presentation have different data freshness types.