Penthera’s CEO Brian Kline Talks About the Ways That Penthera Maximizes the Right KPIs for OTT
Brian Kline, CEO of Penthera, discusses with Tim Siglin, Contributing Editor of Streaming Media, the ways in which choosing the right KPIs is critical to using data effectively for OTT publishing, along with how Penthera uniquely helps streaming companies improve Quality of Experience (QoE)
“Penthera is a software company that provides Quality of Experience products to large streaming companies like Paramount Plus, Fox, Beachbody, and Liberty Global,” Kline says. Penthera has launched PlayAssure, a software product that builds a more extensive real-time buffer of video on streaming devices during playback. This reduces churn and increases ad revenue by ensuring that customers watch more of a publisher’s stream.
“How is Quality of Experience defined on the Penthera side?” Siglin asks.
Kline replies, “We look at Quality of Experience really as the stream quality. So what happens after the customer presses play? And is it a smooth stream? Is it high quality? Does it start up quickly?”
Siglin asks Kline to point out what sort of KPIs do publishers have and what suggestions on KPIs Penthera has that they should really care about.
“We find the things that most folks are focused on are rebuffering rates, startup time, video quality,” Kline says. “When publishers tell us they don't know exactly what that statistics should be, we ask what is the customer experience? What is the impact of improving your rebuffering rate towards getting longer video sessions? We know customers leave when they see re-buffers.”
Siglin points out that publishers often get hung up on analytics data provided by services such as Conviva, but he wonders if they should really be focused on those kinds of KPIs or if they should just be more invested with getting content to the right delivery networks.
Kline says, “They definitely should focus on those KPIs. If you get your content on the right delivery network, that's going to help. But at some point the video leaves that network, and it traverses over a cable network, a DSL network, a fiber network a mobile network, or maybe a Wi-Fi network. I've seen a lot of Wi-Fi networks that weren't deployed so efficiently inside of homes and that often leads to problems like rebuffing.”
This is where Penthera’s new product PlayAssure improves QoE through its unique technology. “What PlayAssure does is it takes advantage on the device of when there's excess bandwidth,” Kline says. “It caches the content ahead. And then when bandwidth goes away, you can play off that cache. So it really smooths out the video stream and it gives our customers another piece of infrastructure inside of their device to just create a better video stream.” In this way, Penthera’s PlayAssure is a valuable tool for improving the overall QoE and customer retention.
Learn more about maximizing KPIs for OTT production at Streaming Media West 2022.
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