Streaming media metrics overview

Metrics in Streaming Media Analytics are event-driven counts and durations computed by the media backend. The media player sends events such as session start, play, ping, and ad start; the media backend processes those events and finalizes metric values on the session close call.

How metrics are calculated

Streaming media metrics follow four main calculation patterns:

  • Event-triggered flags: Set the first time a qualifying event arrives in a session. A play event for main content sets the Content starts flag; an adStart event sets Ad starts. The flag is reported once per session on the close call, not per event.

  • Accumulated durations: Sums the intervals between ping events while a particular playback state is active. Content time spent accumulates while main content is playing; Ad time spent accumulates while an ad is playing. Adobe’s recommended ping interval is 10 seconds for main content and 1 second during ads, so time spent metrics can only be as granular as your implementation’s ping interval.

  • Event counts: Track total occurrences within the session. Quality metrics such as Buffer events, Bitrate changes, Error events, and Pause events count every occurrence, not just the first.

  • Impacted streams: Session-level flags set to 1 if the corresponding event happened at any time during the session, regardless of how many times. Use these metrics to measure reach, while using the event count metric to measure severity. For example, you can use Buffer impacted streams to determine the proportion of sessions that were impacted by buffering across all playback sessions.

Availability by reporting system

Reporting system
How metrics arrive
Adobe Analytics
Populated using Context data variables. Some metrics automatically populate solution events using these context data variables, while others must be mapped to a custom event using Processing rules. Metrics that auto-populate values must have their respective Streaming Media report suite setting enabled first.
Customer Journey Analytics
XDM fields in xdm.mediaReporting.sessionDetails and related nodes, sourced from any dataset that includes streaming media data. You must create each metric with the desired settings within Data view component settings.
Data Feeds
Metrics appear in the event_list and post_event_list columns as event IDs. Each feed file contains an events.csv file containing the lookup for all metrics, including streaming media metrics.
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