Create media reporting for when users start watching

[Toby_S]

Business Question:

Do users start from the beginning, or are they picking up from a certain point in the video asset?

Can we identify when the user started viewing content (VOD)? Adobe gives us time watched, so if someone watched 10 minutes of a movie on a specific date, we want to know if the user was watching from the start or picking up from a certain point they last got to or want to start viewing. Is there a way to measure and report this?

I am using Adobe Heartbeat. This should be easy.

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I don't use the Heartbeat tracking, but I do track key metrics on videos such as Start, Pause, Complete, and Progress at set positions (10%, 25%, 50%, 75%, 90%) as the video plays.

On Start and Pause, I also track the percent complete... so not tied to the "set positions", but I track the actual position. So if the user Starts the video at 62% into it, "Start" with a position of "62%" is tracked.

Getting these percentages however depend on your video player and how to get the current scrub position and duration of the video to calculate out a percentage. You could also go more in-depth and get actual time stamps....

[Toby_S]

Thank you, Jennifer. This makes a lot of sense.

Follow-up question (because it wouldn't be analytics without follow-up questions):

We are collecting asset length (duration), but I am unsure how to capture the playhead position when the asset start happens. Is that a metric that you set somewhere?

Toby

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Lol, followup questions are the best

The playhead position should be provided by most players... technically the player itself needs that information anyway to actually display the progress; and that info should be available to you as well.. but it all depends on what player you are using and how to get those values.

If you are using a well known player, you could try doing a search for specifics around what is available via API or Webhooks, or possibly talk to your developers who may already be familiar with the player code and can help you out.

Or if you are just asking where in Analytics I am tracking it... I track the "position" data in a custom dimension... I round the value to full number (since I didn't want a lot of 24.03535% values showing up). I suppose I could also do that as a metric; most of my video analysis is pretty surface level at this time.

[Toby_S]

I'm going to mark this as correct. Thank you, Jennifer!

If anyone else has a solution they are using with Heartbeat (media analytics) please let me know. 

[Jennifer_Dungan]

I imagine heartbeat tracking should be similar.. or you can augment it with custom dimensions.... 

The real trick is really just getting the position info from your player