Conviva Research Shows Viewers Expect High Quality on Any Device
[Note: This sponsored interview was recorded at Streaming Media East 2014.]
Thanks to its work improving video streaming for clients, Conviva has a unique view on what viewers want and how broadcasters are meeting the challenge. At the 2014 Streaming Media East conference, Conviva vice president of product marketing Ramin Farassat sat down for a red carpet interview to explain how viewer expectations are changing.
"One of the things that we’ve noticed is that the expectations of viewers is continuously rising," Farassat said. "Every year we’re seeing viewers expect to be able to see better quality video and really have the experience that they had on the large screen TV on all the other devices that they’re using."
To document those expectations, Conviva created its 2014 Viewer Experience Report (free download). The report charts the rise of online video viewing.
"The research that we did was to do a comparison of how much more people are using multiple devices for viewing video," Farassat noted. "What we’ve found out is that comparing 2012 to 2013, during prime time, 28 percent of people, 28 percent more of people, were watching video on multiple different devices."
For more on Conviva's findings, watch the full video interview below.
Eric: Hi. I’m Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen, and I’m here at Streaming Media East 2014, in New York City, with Ramin Farassat, the Vice President of Product Marketing for Conviva. Welcome.
Ramin: Thank you.
Eric: Good to have you here. Now, Conviva is involved in helping content publishers ensure quality of experience for viewers. You spoke here the other day at the Content Delivery Summit. Tell us a little about what your observations are for how the nature of TV viewing and online video viewing is changing right now.
Ramin: Absolutely. So as you may know, Conviva is in the business of collecting a lot of information about what’s happening on the internet. So we monitor the quality of experience for each and every user that we have, our library’s integrated with, and our players and our customers, which are some of the biggest publishers in the world and service operators, they’re using our technology to be able to collect this information and get a good view of actually what the user experiences when they’re viewing those video. So one of the things that we’ve noticed is that the expectations of viewers is continuously rising.Every year we’re seeing viewers expect to be able to see better quality video and really have the experience that they had on the large screen TV on all the other devices that they’re using. And that’s really what our customers are facing.
Eric: And so what sort of challenges do those expectations bring for online video providers?
Ramin: So obviously being able to deliver the highest possible quality is challenging. And customers have done a number of different things to be able to deal with these challenges. Things from being able to increase the bit rates of the video, moving into adaptive bit rate, looking at other codecs that could be able to help them, even potentially using multiple different CDN’s to be able to do load balancing and such. They’ve put a lot of efforts into a lot of those activities to be able to get to the best possible quality. But quite frankly, from what we’re seeing, majority of them are not hundred percent there yet.
Eric: Well, let’s get back to viewer expectations then. How are viewer expectations impacting what online video providers are doing what they need to do? What’s changing in terms of those expectations, and how are people responding to that?
Ramin: That’s a great question. So we did a very interesting research. The research that we did was to do a comparison of how much more people are using multiple devices for viewing video. And what we’ve found out is that comparing 2012 to 2013, during prime time, 28 percent of people, 28 percent more of people, were watching video on multiple different devices. So what does that really mean? That means that at the same time in the same home, some people are watching their video on the big TV, somebody else was watching on their mobile device, and somebody was watching on their PC.So what that really does is that now the expectation is to be able to, one, be able to get the video on all those different devices, but also get it at the highest possible quality.Because just because I’m watching it on a tablet or a PC, I don’t want to have a lower quality than what I had on my TV.
Eric: Right. So what can businesses do to make sure that quality of experience gets to people on all those different devices?
Ramin: That’s great question. So first of all, they need to be able to get a view of what the quality is to be able to do something about it.
Eric: Right.
Ramin: And that’s where Conviva comes in. So through our analytics systems we have ability to be able to give them a real good view of what the quality of experience is for each and every user.And we also can give information about the trends on the viewing. Because the trends continuously change. And they need to know what are the devices that are being used more often, what are the different things that people are doing, what are the hours that they’re watching the video and so on, so that they can deal with it. The second thing that we do is we use our data to build a virtual map of the internet. And what does that do? The virtual map of the internet tells us at any instance what’s happening on the internet. What are the congestions? What are the issues that are happening? And we can give our customers alerts and diagnostic means to be able to go and deal with those things. But then the most important part of the whole technology is that not only we give them all this information, in real-time and actually preemptively we can actually correct things. So we can use our technology to be able to go into on a per device basis and either pick different path through the internet so they can get better viewing quality or pick the right bit rate for each individual device to be able to get the best quality possible.
Eric: That’s great stuff. And obviously it’s only becoming more and more important as more people are using more devices in more places. Companies like Conviva-- I shouldn’t say companies like Conviva. Conviva’s really leading the pack when it comes to making sure that quality of experience happens. So great speaking to you. Thanks for sharing some time with our viewers today. I’m here with Ramin Farassat from Conviva at Streaming Media East.
This article is Sponsored Content
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