The Future of Data-Driven Streaming: Overlooked Metrics That Could Unlock OTT Growth
With fierce competition driving annual churn rates as high as 47%, the streaming industry cannot afford to overlook any data-driven insights that could move the needle towards profitability. Success depends on understanding the metrics that power audience engagement, optimise content strategy, and drive revenue growth. While many OTT services rely on standard data points, some critical statistics remain overlooked. Could they provide the competitive edge that’s needed in a crowded market?
In this article, I’ll explore the key analytics every streaming service should monitor, highlight some underutilised data points that can transform decision-making, and explain why a flexible platform for data exports is essential for scaling your service.
Key Metrics Every Streaming Service Monitors
To start, let’s review the foundational statistics that most OTT services already track. These form the backbone of operational and strategic decisions:
1. Audience. Examples include:
- Daily and Monthly Active Users (DAU/MAU): Track the size and consistency of your audience over time. This helps identify growth trends and gauge user loyalty.
- Device Usage: Understand how users access your service—whether via mobile, smart TVs, or desktops—to optimise experiences for the most popular platforms.
2. Engagement. Examples include:
- Hours Watched per User per Day/Time of Day: Understand how engaged your audience is and which content drives the most consumption. Essential for giving users the right content recommendations at the right time.
- Completion Rates: Measure the percentage of content viewed to determine if your audience finishes episodes or movies. This is particularly vital for identifying binge-worthy content and optimising recommendations.
3. Funnel. Examples include:
- Trial-to-Subscriber Conversion Rate: Analyse how many free-trial users convert into paying subscribers.
- Churn Rate: Track the percentage of subscribers who leave your service to refine retention strategies.
4. Quality of Service (QoS) & Quality of Experience (QoE). Examples include:
- Buffering Percentage: Identify issues impacting playback performance.
- Video Startup Time: Ensure your service meets customer expectations for seamless streaming.
- Playback success/Failure: Get early warning of issues that are preventing users from enjoying the content they’ve chosen. This is commonly monitored along with the rate of exits before the video starts (EBVS).
These data points are all critical for day-to-day operations but often represent only the tip of the iceberg.
Neglected Metrics That Could Transform OTT Growth
Here are some commonly overlooked areas to analyse. You may find they offer insights that unlock new opportunities for growth and innovation:
- Behavioural Profiling Through User Profiles
The ability to segment the user experience for different people within a single household account has grown in popularity in line with the growth of both personalised recommendations and the viewing of OTT content on the big screen. Of course, it’s not used by everyone – our experience suggests fewer than 40% of accounts have profiles enabled – but OTT service providers can still make great use of the data these profiles offer. Analysing individual viewing habits more effectively is essential to offering personalised recommendations that are proven to increase engagement and user satisfaction. If you’re still measuring usage only at the household level, you’re missing out. - Catalogue Rotation and Content Discovery
Many streaming services find that 90% of views come from just 10% of their catalogue. While it’s good to know your top performers so you can promote them to more users, it’s important to also track the underutilised content. This data is useful for influencing your future licensing and in-house production decisions, but there’s more that you can do than just drop the poorly performing content. Perhaps the problem isn’t the content but the way you’re promoting it? New graphics or enhanced metadata could be what’s needed to make these unsung gems come to life. You could also consider giving some of the lower-performing assets a boost with some homepage promotion? Or make use of a feature like Magine Pro’s “random” setting which shuffles all the selected assets in a specific collection every 24 hours to keep rails looking fresh. These measures could improve your return on investment for content you’ve already invested in. - Recovered Customers
Most OTT services rightly place massive priority on their churn rate but how closely are you watching the saved subscriptions – those that were on the verge of cancelling but were recovered via promotional offers or reactivation campaigns? Tracking this data can provide a wealth of insights into what is driving the effectiveness of retention strategies and identify opportunities to refine outreach efforts. To really make the best of this data, you’ll need to ensure your user flows capture user feedback on why they’re planning to cancel as well as the measure that persuaded them to stay. - Return on Investment (ROI) by Content Group
Measuring hours watched per content item is valuable. But the true insight comes from correlating that data directly with the relative cost of licensing or producing the content. If cheaper content is driving half as many viewing hours as a flagship drama show, but costs a third as much to make or license, then it could actually be considered your star performer. Getting streaming data and rights data together in one platform drives smarter acquisition decisions. This can help prioritise investments that maximise viewer engagement and revenue.
The Value of Data Exports and Custom Dashboards
If you’re the size of Disney+ or Netflix, you’re almost certainly monitoring all these metrics and more already. For smaller streaming services, however, it’s much harder to be across all the data and take appropriate action. To act on these types of insights, it’s essential to have the right business intelligence tools.
The standard analytics dashboard offered in most streaming platforms can provide an overview, but for truly data-driven growth, you need the ability to customise your analysis and develop your own dashboards.
That’s why we’ve architected the Magine Pro OTT platform so it’s easy to integrate user data with tools you already use, like Tableau or Power BI, empowering your team to make smarter decisions. By creating custom dashboards, you can align your analysis with your specific business goals. For example, tracking engagement trends by region can inform localised content strategies.
Ready to take your streaming data to the next level?
The metrics you monitor today shape the future of your OTT service. By keeping track of some of the commonly neglected data points as well as the foundational ones, you can create a more engaging, efficient, and profitable platform.
Don’t let overlooked metrics hold back your OTT growth. Contact Magine Pro today to see how our flexible tools can help you unlock your platform’s full potential.
