Playback Success

Playback Success Score

Playback Success Score focuses on whether a video played back successfully.

Successful playback includes two components:

• Did the video play without an error?
• Did the user actually get to playback, or did they exit before playback started?

Formula

Playback Success Score is fairly simple. A failure that ends playback is a 0, while a video that plays through without failure is 100. A view that is terminated by the viewer before playback starts (an “Exit Before Video Start,” or EBVS) is given a score of 50. EBVS views that occur in less than 1 second is given no score.

    100: successful playback
    50: exit before video start
    0: playback failure
    N/A: exit before video start <1 second

Why are EBVS views given a score of 50? The reason is that while exits can often point to streaming problems (e.g. the video took too long to load), some percentage of exits before video start are normal. A user might click the wrong video or see a link to a different video they want to watch more. If a view is abandoned in less than one second, we assume the video start was unintentional or programmatic and exclude those play attempts from the score.

Use this metric to:

• Understand how playback failures impact the overall viewer experience
• Compare playback success performance to other areas of viewer experience
• Find areas where playback success can be optimized and improved

Playback Failure Percentage

The Playback Failure Percentage metric gives the percentage of video views that failed to play due to an error. Playback failures can happen at any point during video playback, causing the playback to end prematurely.

Use this metric to:

• Understand where playback failures are happening most frequently
• Watch for spikes in playback failures due to new errors

Visit the Errors section to see which specific errors are happening the most frequently.

Exits Before Video Start

Viewers will sometimes abandon a video (e.g. close the page/app or click the back button) because it is taking too long to load. The Exits Before Video Start Percentage metric captures how frequently this happens.

For this metric we count the number of video views where the viewer clicked play (or the player began to autoplay) but the video never began to play back (Video Startup Time was never recorded), excluding playback failures. We then divide that number by the total number of video views.

Use this metric to:

• Watch how changes in Video Startup Time directly impact viewers abandoning the video
• Compare players and understand if factors other than startup time may be causing viewers to leave, for example visual cues like loading indicators and poster frames.

Note: Viewers may leave for reasons other than long startup times, for example deciding that they clicked the wrong video or clicking on a related video. Before becoming concerned with your platform’s specific percentage you should attempt to improve your Video Startup Time and see how that impacts your Exits Before Video Start.