Top 7 Effective Data Collection Tips for Better OTT Platforms

Data is crucial for Over-the-Top (OTT) platforms. Extensive streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and smaller OTT platforms rely heavily on data to identify their audience, choose content, and ensure customer satisfaction. This discussion explores how collecting accurate data can help increase user engagement and grow an OTT platform.

In this blog, we will share seven tips for collecting data for OTT platforms that are impactful and specially developed for the mentioned purpose. Whether creating a new OTT service or enhancing an existing one, they are helpful—the data you gather will help your center achieve a successful platform.

Why Data Collection is Crucial for OTT Platforms?

To explore the tips fully, one must understand why information collection is essential in the OTT industry.

• Personalizing content: Information assists OTT platforms in knowing users' preferences for programs or series and recommending content the user may like.
• Improving user experience: This way, OTT platforms can detect and identify issues with video quality and ensure that more people stay engaged with their service.
• Getting business insights: Data helps OTT platforms make intelligent choices about what shows to get, how to set prices, and how to advertise.
• Splitting up the audience: Platforms can segment users by program preference and usage patterns of the platform.

Hence, if OTT platforms fail to collate data, they might miss out on connecting with their audiences and improving their work and business. Now, look at the following seven strategies for enhancing data-gathering activity.

The Seven Tips for Better OTT Platforms

Tip 1: Identify Key Metrics to Track

However, before data collection, it is necessary to identify which performance indicators will be more significant for an OTT platform. Concentrating on the appropriate metrics can help you acquire information that will suit your business needs. Here are some essential metrics that OTT platforms should keep track of:

• User Engagement: Ensure you know how much content users view, how long they pay attention to it, and how frequently they revisit the platform. The number of users who engage in the platform daily and how many hours they spend watching content help us identify what people appreciate and how much they enjoy it.
• Churn Rate: Churn rate refers to the rate at which your audience ceases to be your user base in a given period. It is a significant number to watch to see where the users go, and the site is losing.
• Retention Rate: The retention rate reflects how many people continue using the service over time. A higher retention rate equals loyal users.
• Content Performance: Log which series or films people watch most and which they barely watch. That will also assist us in making better decisions about what shows or movies to purchase or produce.
• User Preferences: Pay attention to what people look up, watch, and like so you can better recommend things.
• Device Usage: Explore what type of gadgets your users prefer to watch videos on (smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, and more.). It will help you improve the watching experience on those gadgets.

Hence, attention to several key figures helps get more valuable data on OTT platforms more efficiently.

Tip 2: Utilize First-Party Data

First-party data means data collected directly from your audiences, such as when targeting online website and application users. Such data is credible and valuable because it is collected directly from your clients. It includes things like:

• User registration data: Name, e-mail, age, and where do you live?
• Subscription details: Whether you select an HMO, PPO, or POS, which plan you make, and how frequently and to whom you make payments.
• Viewing history: All the songs or movies you have ever watched, paused during, or rewound.
• Behavioral data: The time people spend observing things, the particular items they seek, and the activities they engage in on the site.

The system must have registration/profiles, individual interfaces with customization options and functions, and rating and watchlist capabilities to obtain crucial customer data. The more data collected, the better a person understands what users prefer and how they use products or services.

When Theory meets Practice: Why First-Party Data is Important

That especially applies to using your own customer data, as it is undoubtedly very important. As well as helping one to understand the legal requirements that have been set regarding data protection and privacy, it also helps companies to know that they can still trade regardless of the legal rules. It also allows them to make their customers happy by offering them and creating special events.

Tip 3: Leverage Analytics Tools

To utilize the most significant portion of the information you glean, you have to use powerful analysis tools capable of analyzing this information. These tools will enable you to perform these analyses faster and more accurately than if you do it manually. Below are some popular analysis tools used by OTT platforms:

• Google Analytics: This tool enables one to view how people engage with your OTT website or app, such as their geographic origin, pages visited, and more.
• Google Analytics: Teaches you how the users use your platform and what they do with it.
• Amplitude: This information informs you about the user's activities and how they interact with the product you provided.
• Conviva: It lets you know how well your videos are streaming, their quality, and how they stream.
• Looker: This allows one to view and comprehend composite data structures.

Analytics platforms also allow you to observe how people interact with your website or app and monitor and improve numbers.

Tip 4: Segment Your Audience

Only some people are, thus, your platform, so they don't behave or do things the same way. To give a unique experience to the users, you should divide them into groups depending on some things, such as how they act and what they are. That helps you organize users based on factors such as:

• Information about people: Whether they are young or old, whether they are male or female, in what country they are from, and the language preference of the individual.
• What people like to watch: Program genres, such as stories, fabricated stories, and individual program preferences.
• There are different ways people can use the service that are currently using it without charge, currently charged after subscribing, and using it in the trial period.
• How people watch shows: How frequently do they tune in, what specific time of day do they prefer to watch programs, and if, in general, they like to binge-watch?
• How people watch shows: Some watch them on their phones, and some watch them on a smart TV.

Once you categorize your viewers, you can notify each of them about special content, suggestions, and offers that interest them. For example, it could be noticed by persons who prefer watching many programs simultaneously that TV series with many episodes could be suggested, or persons who watch programs on weekends could be presented with collections of films to watch on weekends.

Dividing viewer attention enables streaming platforms to provide better experiences that make viewers more interested and engaged, prevent them from leaving, and ultimately make them happier.

Tip 5: Implement A/B Testing

A/B testing compares one version of something to determine which is most effective. With A/B testing, different areas of the OTT platforms can sometimes be improved. How the app looks and feels: Users should be tested on the button placement and navigation to determine which layout they like most.

We recommend that people experiment with how one offers something to others to determine which approach attracts more interest.

• How we ask people to pay: Make a slight change in the request for funds by the amount we request or propose other forms of subscription to try and see which of the varied strategies attracts more paying consumers.
• How we tell people about the app: Determine which methods, such as mailing, social media, or in-app notifications, are more effective.

If you execute A/B tests, you can make conclusions based on data about what is more effective within your site or application. This assists you in enhancing how users engage with your platform, encouraging as many people as possible to perform a set task, and improving your products using objective user feedback.

Tip 6: Optimize Data Collection for Different Devices

OTT platforms can be seen on mobile phones, tablets, smart LED TVs, video/game consoles, and others. Because they contain different forms of data, each device must be taken properly to obtain the correct data.

• Smartphones and Tablets: Time spent should capture aspects like the screen's noise, the pictures' quality, and how you use the internet on mobile gadgets.
• Smart TVs: Observe where the main operation of the remote is, which applications are most commonly used, and how distinguishable the videos are when displayed on a large screen.
• Desktop and Web Browsers: They analyze the links people click to get to the site, the mouse actions they perform, and even the type of internet browser that brings traffic to the site.
• Gaming Consoles: Think about how people conduct themselves or interact with gaming consoles.

If you want to know how your visitors use your website on a desktop, tablet, or smartphone screen, you can retrieve data in a form that is more appropriate for each of these. This can help make viewing for any type of device more of a positive experience, and people will be happier with your website.

Tip 7: Data Protection and GDPR-commerce

A movie or series loved by viewers with different tastes causes OTT platforms to possess valuable data: data belonging to users, including personal data, payment data, and their preferred data. Oh, really, these data should be interpreted secretly and safeguarded against all ill-mannered interlopers. If the information is unsafe, there are big issues with law and money. Here are some essential things to remember for keeping data safe and following the rules:

• Cautiously state what information is required, how you will use it, and why it is essential.
• To reduce the risks associated with the input and output, secure code is implemented to control the information at the time of storage as well as at the time of transmission.
• It is also desirable that information that can relate to individuals or their close relatives should not be related to them.
• Review the privacy rules to ensure you follow them when collecting and storing people's information.

As long as OTT platforms ensure that they do not share or compromise the information provided, they should be able to gain people's trust, avoid legal battles, and respect the laws regarding data protection.

Conclusion

You see, data is a precious commodity for any streaming service. Sometimes, it includes suggestions for shows or movies you might like or what content to get. If you pay attention to these numbers, if you use some inputs to which you have access, if you use some software to analyze the data, if you split the audience who observes, if you test different approaches to what works best, if you focus on an exemplary user interface across platforms, and if you think privacy, you can beat other streaming platforms and make watching shows and movies more enjoyable for everybody.

To further advance your data collection approach, you should contact Scraping Intelligence. With Scraping Intelligence, you can scrape competitor data, market data, and user reviews from several other sources. This information could help enrich your first-party data, allow you to anticipate changes, and make better decisions. Using internal and external data sources, you can improve your platform's performance and provide your users with an enjoyable experience, which will contribute to further continuous growth in the highly competitive OTT environment.