Metrics question
You are the product manager for a News App. What metrics will tell you that you should discontinue the product?
- Sony Entertainment
- Metrics
- Hard
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What this question tests
Tests the ability to define clear kill-criteria metrics for a product, distinguishing a temporary rough patch from a genuine signal to sunset.
How to approach it
- Clarify what 'discontinue' means: a decision this significant needs multiple converging signals, not one bad week of numbers.
- Propose an engagement signal: sustained decline in daily or weekly active users over a meaningful period, such as 2 consecutive quarters, not a single month.
- Propose a retention signal: falling long-term retention (users not returning after 30 or 90 days) despite continued marketing or content investment.
- Propose a business signal: revenue or cost-to-serve ratio turning structurally negative with no credible path to improve it.
- Propose a market signal: user needs migrating to a substitute (social media or push notifications replacing dedicated news apps) in a way the product cannot counter.
- Set a decision rule: discontinue only if engagement, retention, and business metrics are all declining together with no identified fixable cause.
What a strong answer includes
- Requires multiple converging metrics (engagement, retention, business) before recommending discontinuation, rather than one metric in isolation.
- Distinguishes a temporary dip from a structural decline by requiring sustained decline over multiple quarters, not one bad period.
- Names a real, current threat specific to news apps, users substituting social media and push notifications for a dedicated app, as a plausible structural cause.
- Proposes a clear decision rule upfront rather than a vague 'if things get bad enough' answer.
Common mistakes
- Recommending discontinuation based on one short-term metric dip without checking for a fixable cause first.
- Ignoring the business-side signal (cost to serve versus revenue) and focusing only on engagement.
Likely follow-up questions
- What would make you reconsider discontinuing even if all these metrics were declining?
- How would you distinguish a seasonal dip in news consumption from a structural decline?
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More questions from Sony Entertainment
Learn the skill behind it
Chapters of the AI PM course that teach what this question tests.
- Chapter 9: Prove it paid off: outcomes, economics, and pricing
- Chapter 2: Data fluency: SQL, logs, and reading the truth yourself
- Chapter 14: Get the job: the AI PM interview loop