Ophélie Boucaud, Principal Analyst at Dataxis, sheds some light on the quest for more relevant and comparable performance metrics in the ad-supported streaming world, and what needs to happen to create greater transparency.
Assessing the performances of ad-supported free streaming services has become a game of comparing apples and bananas in recent years. The ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) and free ad-supported TV (FAST) industries are notoriously hard to evaluate because each actor will use their own methodology and proprietary KPIs when issuing information on their uptake. Some platforms will share their reach, others will talk about engagement and usage, competitors will push high registration numbers, and only a handful of them share their volume metrics in terms of viewing time.
The infamous Monthly Active Users (MAU) KPI is also highly contested, mostly because the calculation methodology highly differs from one service to another. And that’s before we even get onto the streamers that do away with this somewhat industry-wide accepted metric and instead disclose volume KPIs as unique users per year, weekly active users, or even a 90-day active base, among others...
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