Conviva Leadership
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In “Back to the Future II,” Marty McFly saw that his Sports Almanac would enable Biff, his enemy, to gamble and win big – becoming wealthy, powerful and corrupt in the future. Using the Delorean and a little help from Doc, Marty traveled through time, stopped Biff and altered the future for the better.
Unfortunately, in the real world businesses don’t have access to time machines revealing market trends, threats or opportunities. As a result, history is riddled with numerous examples, from traditional manufacturing to telecom companies, of once thriving industries that struggle to navigate new industry dynamics.
Others, such as music, took years to reform despite industry headwinds. For example, from the late 90s through 2011 global music sales stagnated, as the industry was unable to harness the power of digital. Many analysts muse that had executives been quicker to embrace services such as VEVO, Pandora, Grooveshark and Spotify the industry would have avoided a lost decade of confusion and lackluster sales.
The shift towards digital content consumption has expanded and is touching a wide spectrum of industries. Particularly exhilarating is the transition occurring in video as consumers move from broadcast to broadband consumption. Cisco Systems reports that online video shot up to 56 percent of consumer web traffic in 2012, anything from short clips to full TV shows and
movies. As a result, media publishers are realizing the importance of not just making their content accessible over the Internet, but also providing consumers with online video of the highest quality to retain the hearts and minds of loyal viewers.
Now, Conviva doesn’t own a time machine, but we do have a substantial amount of data we’ve analyzed to understand the quantum shift to digital. In 2013 alone, we announced that our big data platform processed over 45 billion video streams across more than 1.6 billion devices – including PCs, tablets, smartphones and connected TVs – in 180 countries and on more than 400 premium media video players. This data gives us an exceptional vantage point to observe how viewers engage with content. Most notably, it’s evident how rapidly viewers abandon websites when streaming quality is sub-optimal (e.g., buffering, slow to start, low quality picture).
And buffering is on the rise. For example, in 2011, a 1% increase in buffering led to 3 minutes lost in viewing time. In 2012, a 1% increase in buffering led to 8 minutes lost in viewing time.
As a result, many of the top media brands including AEG, CNTV, HBO, ESPN and CBC partner with Conviva to ensure the highest quality streaming experience is being delivered for their content.Conviva’s Precision is enabling these brands to join the ‘digital revolution’ and to deliver the same TV-quality experience across all connected devices, despite the unpredictability of the Internet. Just like the Delorean enabled Marty to see what was ahead for him, Precision sees issues like buffering ahead and avoids them before they impact the viewers.
If you’d like to learn more about how Conviva can help you optimize your online video streaming and control the viewing experience, please contact me.
Diana Paschal
Digital Marketing Team
