Video OTT and streaming services constantly strive to deliver a seamless, high-quality viewing experience. Nonetheless, one challenge that has long plagued the industry is the ability to provide consistent and reliable video playback resumption across multiple devices and sessions, commonly referred to as cross-device bookmarking.
Viewers often switch devices midway while consuming content and expect to resume from the same spot without any hitch. This ability to ‘bookmark’ content is crucial to ensuring a seamless user experience, customer satisfaction, and ultimately, customer retention. Achieving seamless cross-device functionality is no small feat, however. It requires substantial engineering resources and dedicated technology to ensure that a user’s spot in a video stream is accurate to the second when they switch between devices.
Enter NPAW’s PlayHead Tracker – an API-based solution with which streaming services can overcome this crucial industry challenge without the investment in engineering and manpower.
Understanding the Challenge of Cross-Device Bookmarking
The rise in the number of devices and platforms for consuming video content has added a layer of complexity to delivering an optimized OTT streaming experience – the challenge of cross-device bookmarking. This usually involves users starting a video on one device, pausing it, and then resuming on a different device right where they left off. It sounds simple, but from a technological standpoint, it’s anything but.
Here’s why cross-device bookmarking is challenging:
- Diverse Platforms and Devices: with users watching OTT content on smartphones, laptops, tablets, smart TVs, and gaming consoles, the varying protocols, interfaces, and operating systems can hugely complicate the task of synchronizing user playback positions across these environments.
- Accuracy: achieving precise playback accuracy across devices is crucial for a seamless user experience. However, ensuring this requires technology that can track and save user progress with split-second precision.
- Minimal Startup Impact: maintaining minimal video startup times while implementing cross-device bookmarking functionality is essential. Any lag or delay experienced by users can lead to dissatisfaction and might potentially push the user towards competitors.
- Resource Intensive: the technology and resources needed to solve this challenge internally can be extremely resource-intensive. It requires a dedicated team of engineers to develop, test, and maintain the system, often leading to high operational costs.
In essence, the plight of cross-device bookmarking is not just about remembering where a user left off. It’s about delivering a user experience that feels personal, seamless, and effortless, regardless of the device or platform involved. In today’s highly competitive OTT streaming landscape, solving this challenge is a prerequisite for retaining and satisfying viewers.
How does PlayHead Tracker solve the problem of cross-device bookmarking?
PlayHead Tracker is a cross-device bookmarking solution that significantly enhances the video playback experience and boosts customer satisfaction. It stands out because of its unique ability not just to provide an accurate bookmarking function, but also to do so with minimal operational effort required from the service provider.
The tool operates on NPAW’s exclusive 5-second beat technology, providing a superior average resume accuracy of just 2.5 seconds. This means that users can switch between devices more fluidly, without having to manually search for where they left off in their content. The advanced algorithm ensures that the device instantly recognizes and picks up the playback from the last viewed frame, regardless of the device being used.
What’s more, the PlayHead Tracker’s fully developed, low-latency API ensures there’s minimal impact on video playback startup times. This ensures your viewers don’t have to endure any delays when they switch from one device to another, making the cross-device bookmarking experience smooth and effortless.
One of the most appealing aspects of NPAW’s PlayHead Tracker is its hassle-free integration. It requires minimal effort to incorporate the tool into existing services, making it an efficient solution for businesses looking to optimize their services without having to invest heavily in internal engineering resources.
Overall, the introduction of NPAW’s PlayHead Tracker is a game-changer for OTT and streaming service providers. By overcoming the challenge of cross-device bookmarking, it significantly enhances the viewer’s experience, helping drive customer satisfaction, improving retention rates, and cultivating a higher degree of user loyalty.
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Isn’t it time to offer your customers a truly seamless cross-device viewing experience? Request a demo of PlayHead Tracker today.