Online video analytics

Online video analytics (also known as Web video analytics) is the measurement, analysis and reporting of videos viewed online. It is used for the purposes of understanding the consumption patterns (behavioral analysis) and optimizing viewing experience (quality of service analysis).

Online video analytics differs from traditional television analytics because it can be measured using census-based methods instead of panel-based metrics. Every event that a viewer does while watching a video online can be captured and analyzed precisely.

The study of consumption patterns helps video publishers gain insights into the end-user preferences. These insights are then used to drive monetization by ad placements, and to tailor future videos to maximize viewer engagement. It aims to answer questions such as:

The following metrics are of real interest both for on-demand and live videos:

Along with other obvious dimensions (like Country, Browser, Device etc.), a particularly interesting dimension is Stream Position (or Video Portion). Measured as a percentage of video length, for a particular video, Plays by Stream Position indicates which portion of the video is watched how many times. It helps with analysis such as, 40% of the viewers drop off from the video after watching only 25%.

Visual analysis tools integrated into online video platforms are designed to transform multiple viewing experiences into a graphic form, in order to understand the audience and optimizing video content performance.

A graphical summary that helps to figure out how viewers are engaged with a specific video is called a Video Heatmap. Unlike heatmaps used in website analytics, which highlight different areas of a web page depending on the click-through rate, a video heatmap aggregates stats from every viewing session and calculates an average engagement rate (also known as watch rate ) throughout the entire video. Depending on the platform, a video hitmap can be represented in a form of a graph or a colored timeline.

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