Real-time Video Analytics and Predictive Insights Correlating User Tracking and Platform Performance

05 Oct

Password Sharing: Friend or Foe?

Posted at 14:57h in Blog by Research & Editorial Team

Susan, a mother in Portland, signs up for a subscription-based, video-on-demand service (SVOD) for her family. The next month, her eldest son Tommy goes off to college in Chicago and takes the password with him. In his first week, Tommy shares the password with his roommate and his new friends down the hall. Soon Susan's family SVOD account is being used in ways explicitly prohibited by her contract with the SVOD provider and—according to a ruling in 2016 by a U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals—in direct violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

And Tommy isn't an anomaly. In a recent survey of college students' viewing habits by consulting firm Parks Associates, more than two-thirds of respondents use someone else's password and they would simply stop watching if ever forced to pay. One surveyed student was blunt about it: "If [the shared password I use] dropped, I’d use a different friend’s password. There’s like an infinite number of passwords that I could use and not pay for it." Young adults generally are far more likely to share SVOD passwords. A Reuters/Ipsos poll from June 2017 shows that nearly a quarter of adults under 24 years of age use illegally shared passwords for streaming sites.

But is all this password sharing bad for business?

Reed Hastings of Netflix sees it as a net positive. At last year's CES, he explained, "As kids move on in their life, they like to have control of their life, and as they have an income, we see them separately subscribe. It really hasn’t been a problem." The numbers seem to bear this out: The same Reuters/Ipsos poll shows a steady decline in password-sharing as users get older.

One could speculate on the causes for the generational divide in password-sharing habits: 1) higher incomes among older adults, which would make subscription rates less daunting, 2) withering of college social circles where passwords might be shared, and 3) evolving social mores as one gets older, which make password sharing more of a taboo. On this last point, there is some debate: Do we develop a sense of responsibility to pay for content as we get older or is it simply that young adults now have an ingrained sense that sharing passwords is not immoral and they will carry this attitude into middle age?

For now, anyway, industry leaders seem to agree that password sharing often helps SVOD providers more than it hurts as it winds up being a powerful marketing vehicle. On the other hand, media providers such as The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have seen startling jumps in revenue after cracking down on free-riders, with the latter reporting an 86% jump in paid subscribers after closing off a leak in its paywall.

For a content provider of any kind, determining whether free-riders and password-sharers are good or bad for business is a matter of debate. But what is not in doubt is that SVOD providers must arm themselves with solid and thorough data on just who is using their services and how they are using them if they want to make decisions that will maximize revenue in the short and long term.

NPAW's YOUBORA Infinity empowers SVOD providers with the data they need. Its robust tools for spotting password sharing across multiple geo locations, devices and IPs can be configured to match a provider's business strategy. Its ability to dive into contextualized data on consumer behavior—now including password sharing—is a goldmine for marketing departments looking to expand customer acquisitions, for customer service departments validating complaints and looking to improve retention rates, and for technical teams wanting to improve user authentication methods.

With YOUBORA Infinity, decision makers at SVOD providers are now armed with essential data on where, when and how its subscribers are using—and perhaps abusing—their services.

18 Jan

HOW MANY ADS ARE TOO MANY?

Posted at 15:56h in Blog by Research & Editorial Team

Online video viewers see ads as something to be tolerated but rarely enjoyed. No matter an ad’s production quality, viewers may turn away if they feel overburdened. But as an essential source of revenue for many online video services, ads seems here to stay. Ad spaces must be sufficiently robust to be effective, yet geared to be only as burdensome to viewers as they will tolerate. Just where that line is where advertisers get their money’s worth, service providers see sufficient revenue, and viewers don’t turn away in annoyance is key to an online video providers survival. The subject of a Streaming Video Alliance webinar, the challenge of finding the right balance of ads vs online content is drawing increasing industry attention.

A virtually limitless array of KPIs can be set and tracked to identify the optimal levels of advertising that will keep audiences tuned in. How are your 30-second pre-roll ads working with weekend iPad users in North America? If you see high quit rates, dig deeper to identify general trends in a region, or to explore which segments of your audience show a greater or lesser tolerance for a particular combination of ads by length, number, position, and quality. What about the day of the week, for example? Perhaps these long ads are tolerated on weekends or evenings, but not weekdays. When it comes to live content, you can determine, for example, whether poor ad quality or a large number of ads faces greater resistance from users. An NPAW study found, for example, that only 2% of users dropped off during mid-roll ads that were less than 30 seconds, while the drop-off rate jumped to nearly 50% on ads longer than 50 seconds. By focussing on where you see users turning away from ads, the right adjustments to ad quantity, length, position, type and frequency can be made to match specific audience’s tolerance. There is always a point at which placing another ad would result in diminishing returns as it would provoke a user to turn away from the service. Finding this point and placing ads accordingly should be a primary aim of any advertising department.

As an advertising manager at an online video service, placing ads should not be a guessing game. You need to know what’s working, what isn’t, and why. Monitoring your ad strategy with business intelligence tools like SmartAds by NPAW reveals the reasons ads are failing to engage your audience, helping you to minimize your viewers’ frustration and keep your advertisers satisfied that their campaigns are having an impact on their targets. For your AVOD to compete for audience against limitless alternative online content, the quantity, type, and positioning of your ads should be decided based on the solid, easily understandable data on your users’ behavior, demographics and experience that SmartAds provides. This module also provides added transparency, building trust and credibility between ad servers and video services with a third-party, neutral view of ad performance data.

The path forward for the industry was laid out recently by Anna Bager, senior VP, and GM for the mobile and video centers of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB): “If you’re a marketer, you need to pay attention to OTT, because that’s where the audience is moving.” And OTTs, by consequence, need to gear themselves to cater to advertisers in a way that does not turn away their viewers. It’s a balancing act, but one that can be managed with the right data tools.

18 Jan

TABLE FOR TWO MILLION: TRACKING QOE IN REAL TIME

Posted at 16:10h in Blog by Research & Editorial Team

In a restaurant, a waiter can ask diners how they are enjoying their meal and can keep an eye on their responses to each dish, meticulously following the dining experience from the moment a guests sit down until they walk out the door. In the world of online video, providers are never at their users’ side, but with real-time monitoring technologies they can be almost waiter-like in their attentiveness—and for millions of customers in real time.

NPAW has developed leading technology that offers a detailed view of a user’s every playback session including any technical issues, as well as user-prompted events like pauses and plays. And when an issue arises with one view, it can quickly be determined if the same problem is affecting a bigger swath of the user base. Knowing exactly what users are experiencing and how they are using a service allows decision makers at online video services to quickly attend to their users’ needs and verify if complaints are legitimate.

What is the quality of every single view, in terms of buffer, join time, play failures, bitrate? With YOUBORA’s SmartTracking, an overall ‘happiness score’ is created for each view, allowing for a quick overview of users´experiences. But the analysis goes far deeper. At what video resolution does the user experience a specific video, and at precisely which moments during video playback does it change? And what is the behavior of a user or multiple users when facing a specific quality issue? When an issue arises with one user, how widespread is it across the platform? With an intuitive interface, SmartTracking provides the answers to all these questions and more, allowing customer-care teams to respond to user-specific tickets without the need for intervention from the engineering department.

18 Jan

SOUNDING THE ALARM: SETTING ALERTS FOR RAPID RESPONSE

Posted at 16:08h in Blog by Research & Editorial Team

It’s one thing for a video service to collect terabytes of data on customer behavior and QoE. It’s another to analyze that data for actionable patterns. This is the heart of what the YOUBORA solution offers online video services, with virtually limitless variables with which to analyze and understand a video service’s audience and their QoE.

But often this data can’t wait for expert technicians to pore over it—like when the issue is a sudden spike in buffer ratios in a specific region in the world, or a when a certain codec begins to fail on specific devices affecting thousands or millions of users. These emergency situations are times when CTOs and COOs need to know immediately what is going on, and for this YOUBORA has SmartAlerts—the only solution on the market that can alert decision makers down to 1-minute granularity in real time to peering, network capacity, and congestion issues causing bottlenecks in video delivery.

Thresholds and variables for these alerts can be set-up in advance and delivered via email, API hook or from within YOUBORA’s user interface.

Let’s consider a few use cases made possible with SmartAlerts:

Am I having QoE problems on my platform? In which countries am I serving poor quality? Set the threshold at which you want to be alerted specific to each country or region.
Are all my CDNs performing as expected? Is there any combination of CDN and ISP that has a peak value of Buffer Ratio? If so, how many views have been affected?
Are all my codecs or DRM working as expected? Or do I have an issue with playback on certain devices?
How many alerts did I have over the last month? See an overview of historical alerts to get a better sense of repeat issues.

With thresholds set and alerts in place, you can stay focussed on what matters most knowing that alarms will sound if anything goes awry.

06 Sep

Testing Gives You Better Aim

Posted at 18:37h in Blog by Joaquin De Miguel

In our previous articles we spoke about the ability to predict churn and support your ROI with lifetime value forecasts. It was clear the importance of defining longitudinal strategies involving business, technical and operational departments within your entire media service to reduce churn and maximize revenue.

Now, how to rest assure that you make the right call? How do you know that applying changes on advertising arrangement, on content, on your UI and make any other significant changes is good for your business? No longer need to use game theory before taking any major customer driven decision. A/B Testing and Multivariate Testing (MVT) will help you test decisions before implementing them into the wider audience reducing and mitigating risks bringing you closer to the real Nash’s equilibrium.

WHAT ARE A/B TESTING & MVT?

A/B or split testing is the most standard practice when it comes to testing decisions. It allows you to show your users two variants of a same campaign, tracking the difference in your audience’s reaction towards it and therefore understand which version makes them tick.

A Multivariate test is more complex than an A/B test, it starts off with defining a goal. From there it allows you to change and monitor an unlimited range of variables that you think highly influence your goal over that specific segment of your audience. This practice is more user resourceful than others for it to be greatly accurate. MVT provides you with insights on which out of all variations perform the best. Based on the result you can see which combinations work best for the goal previously defined.

WHAT DO THE RESULTS OF THE TESTS ALLOW ME TO DO?

Both of these tests give you the ability to turn your business intelligence (BI) tool into a lab where you can run controlled experiments among segments of your customer base. Before taking any major decision, you would test it among a reduced sample of users and see how it affects their behavior. The ability to test decisions prior to taking them gives you a strong competitive edge as you reduce your chances to shoot and miss.

HOW DO I BENEFIT FROM THIS?

The effect of such tests in a real setting is mutually beneficial to your users and your business. Testing several parameters such as: editorial decisions, content arrangement, IO, number and positions of ads per page, CDN strategy, recommendation algorithms, etc. improves your service. Applying these methods leads to effective customer retention, increase in user interaction, engagement, satisfaction and higher revenue. Testing alongside predictive and descriptive insights provided by business intelligence puts you in the most accurate road towards success.

Answer the “what are the odds?” question accurately.

Just another thing to think about from us here at NPAW.

18 Jan

NEW MARKETS BELONG TO THOSE WHO UNDERSTAND THEM

Posted at 14:50h in Blog by Research & Editorial Team

In late 2015 Netflix reported profits dropping in the United States but growing quickly internationally. Their global expansion was offsetting slow growth in the domestic market, but they faced multiple challenges as they headed into dozens of new markets at once. In some countries subscriptions took off, while in others they stalled. In developing economies, most households lack Internet access. Most everywhere, audiences crave locally produced content in local languages. The price point that worked in North America was less competitive elsewhere, thereby failing to dim the appeal of pirated content.

For other players in the industry, Netflix’s global expansion offers plenty of lessons. Foremost for a video service looking to penetrate a new market: Know the customer base, consumption trends and industry levels of performance. What do users want? What do they expect? How do they behave? At which quality should content be delivered to ensure premium QoE? With NPAW’s SmartTrends—a module within YOUBORA—industry benchmarks, services know where they stand when measured against industry standards.

It’s one thing to run an A/B test or MVT on existing customers to fine tune segmented video services, but what can a video service learn about a market before entering it? With SmartTrends broadcasters, media groups, OTTs and telcos can take the guesswork out of expansion into a foreign market. Highlighting trends from across the industry, content providers get an insider’s view with a variety of metrics. Companies can see the top-ten best performing devices, ISPs, browsers, operating systems (OSs) and device types, which would allow, for example, a comparison of buffer ratio for a specific OSs and comparisons with the performance of industry leaders. Video services can use data-driven insights to define device strategy for a given country, for example, by breaking down plays by device type, vendor or model for that country to compare your performance levels with industry peers. Buffer ratios on mid-length videos at high bitrates in a given region can be compared to those at lower bitrates to determine ideal delivery strategies. QoE industry levels can be identified for the most used device and browser and for a specific content media duration to fine tune your content strategy and technical configurations. The same approach can be used to see where your video service stacks up by join time, average bitrate, play failures and a variety of other metrics to ensure premium QoE.

Once content providers have a foothold in a new market, these business intelligence insights help them measure their progress against industry standards, allowing them to focus on what’s working and improve on what’s not and to prioritize improvement opportunities while setting realistic goals. With SmartTrends, video providers understand what lies ahead in a target market, see how their service stacks up in markets they are already in, and know what it takes to keep a step ahead of the others.

18 Jan

GET THE MOST FROM YOUR CDNS

Posted at 16:03h in Blog by Research & Editorial Team

With video services delivering massive amounts of data globally, a robust and agile CDN switching setup is an essential component in the delivery stream for all major players in the industry. But like the skinning of cats, there is more than one way to switch CDNs on the fly. Here we break down the pros and cons of the three principle methods.

AT THE DNS LEVEL

How it works:

The URL of the service is indicated by a DNS routing switch that consists of the content (video title) and the base (depending on the current CDN).

Pros & cons:

Working at the DNS level, setup can be integrated without modifying the app. However, traffic analysis is limited because the app gets no data on the CDN, and with the base of the URL changing (and possibly the parameters, as well) at every CDN switch, this can cause havoc during live streams.

WITH A PLUG-IN

How it works:

Third-party software within the user’s player makes the decision to switch CDNs taking into account QoE metrics for that user such as CPU or memory performance.

Pros & cons:

It’s a simple solution, but a black box with risks that outway the benefit. When a plug-in is left to make these serious business decisions without a wider understand of network load, it may choose a CDN that does not match the goals of the distributor. Bad decisions can also impact other “middlemen” and negatively affect delivery performance. What’s more, plug-ins also require updating whenever a customer adopts a new player.

WITH AN API

How it works:

In the case of SmartSwitch, NPAW’s API, the client or server asks which CDN is best for a given IP and device. SmartSwitch applies an algorithm previously configured by the customer and suggests an ordered list of possible CDNs. The customer’s API will then choose the CDN and redirect data flow. SmartSwitch draws on end-user data from around the world to continuously learn, monitor and predict the best routes for a given request. It can even be optimized with a hierarchy of preferences by geography, ISP, time of day and quality metrics based on a customer’s data or by CDN performance across the industry.

Pros & cons:

CDN switching with an API is inexpensive to set-up, benefits from QoE data and is more flexible than the other options. Although setup takes a bit more effort, once in operation the API solution is fully scalable and can painlessly integrate new players as it functions at the server level. This setup also allows for communication to go from client-to-server to server-to-server, a method prefered by industry leaders. Since the slimmed down plug-in involved in an API setup only collects data and does not make decisions, there is minimal code while the right switching decisions are made to maximize speed with minimal risk to network stability.

30 Aug

Offline Content: Freedom and Satisfaction For Your Customers!

Posted at 15:42h in Analytics by Joaquin De Miguel

With mobile devices tailgating laptops as “the most watched on device” and video content taking over most of the web, the matter of mobility and access to an online video service without any internet is an aspect that users start to take into account when choosing an online video provider or renewing their subscription. Online media services’ reach is limited to where there is an Internet connection. Online video services’ full reliance on connected areas is the greatest weakness OTTs have against more traditional formats such as blu-rays or standard VODs.

FIRST SPOTTED IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY, NOW NETFLIX, AMAZON, AND YOUTUBE RED OFFER OFFLINE PLAYBACK

The issue of online media content being available was first spotted in the music industry where music streaming services needed to make their offering available anywhere as music on mobile devices is intended to be listened to on the go. By making this possible, music streaming services are now the most popular form of listening to music. Granting users to take your offered content on the go is becoming a trend since the big players in the market such as Netflix, Amazon and Youtube Red have made this feature available to their users.

A BONUS EFFECT ON YOUR OFFERING

Allowing your users to download content from your streaming library is not losing control over it. Not only does it keep your users in your platform even when there is no connection but it also increases customer satisfaction. Offline playback is a desired feature that works as a bonus on your offering.

THE TOOL TO OPEN NEW MARKETS

Internet connections and pricey data plans have been historical constraints to market penetration of VOD services, excluding massive groups of a population from entertainment. This limits users from those areas in having good access to online video content with a decent quality of experience. By offering the possibility to download content, users with limited access to the internet can take advantage of the benefits offered by online video platforms and put aside physical formats. Such a simple addition to your value proposition can go a long way in new markets.

NO MORE BLIND SPOTS

Downloadable content also gives you more visibility on your entire service performance and customer behavior. As business intelligence is embedded within your player, it is still able to track and extract data when a user is watching offline content. Once the connection is re-established advanced BI would process and display the latest insights, thus guaranteeing online media providers with a real and constant point of view on their users. This gives you a real, reliable and uninterrupted perspective on the behavior of your users.

Just another thing to think about from us here at NPAW.