What statistics are relevant to my online content?

Generally speaking, in today's high-tech, streaming media world, there are 4 common data types being collected and evaluated:

1. Viewership Statistics: Source - OVP (Online Video Platform) & CDN (Content Delivery Network)

Number of views (per platform, App, channel, device, day, week, month, year)
Collective/average viewing time
Geo-location (country, state, city)

These are best to track at on the delivery-end: the CDN. Since CDN POPs (datacenters in a CDN which deliver your content) know exactly where viewers are and register every access to your media most accurately, a CDN always has the most accurate data for viewing stats & geo location. The problem with CDNs is that they usually don’t offer a stats/reporting center to display this information to publishers. This is an advantage of an OVP, who can extract this data for their customers. With the LightcastOVP & CDN you get both and you have this entire data class covered by the Lightcast Media Stats Center.

2. Behavior: Source - Viewer-side statistics, Apps or Media Players

How long do viewers stay on an app?
Where and when do they exit?
What is the bounce rate?
What are the conversion goals?
What is the conversion rate of subscribers (for publishers who offer a subscription product)
How many pages of the App do viewers open?

These are some examples of viewer behavior which can be tracked inside of Apps or media players and delivered via software applications which provide APIs for it, such as Universal Analytics or Google Analytics. It just requires to set the tracking goals in the application (such as Google Analytics, Conveva, etc…), generate the tracking codes, send them to the app developers and have them integrated in the apps for resubmission to the app stores as updates.

3. Demographics: Source - Market Research/Studies

Demographic data can be: Gender, age, religion, political affiliation, income, etc.

These are all valuable demographics, which are not easily collected by automation. That said, there are companies who offer viewer data, which they mine and store in their own databases to sell as part of expensive data products. The typical way of collecting such data is through market research (phone studies, web surveys etc., sourcing a representative sample of a targeted population).

Each OTT/ConnectedTV platform, such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, Apple TV, etc. collect demographic data from users who register an account with them. While this data is not shared with Publishers, those who support a subscription-based service can utilize their own Subscriber system to collect whatever demographic data is important to them.

4. App Installs: Source - App-Store

We can retrieve this information on your behalf from each App Store, but they do not share this automated. App Stores do not provide this information to the public, or as a live-feed via an API, otherwise it would be displayed in your Lightcast.com account.