Getting Streaming Media Right

Digital Element’s Charlie Johnson.

Charlie Johnson, digital media director of Europe for Digital Element discusses using IP Intelligence data to manage digital rights and improve user experience.

These types of negative online experiences can frustrate users, are damaging for brands, and in the majority of cases are unnecessary. There is an alternative. By using IP Intelligence data, content providers can stream media to the right visitors at the right speed, enhance the customer experience, increase customer loyalty, and comply with geographic content rights.

IP Intelligence is information returned from a user’s IP address – information such as location, connection speed and ISP. With this information, websites can make decisions about what content to make available to web visitors. However, it is important to work with accurate data, and not all IP data providers are created equal. There is a vast chasm between those who simply repackage publicly-available data and premium providers who deploy multiple methodologies to analyse IP routing infrastructure.

Premium IP data, at its most granular level, can enable websites to accurately locate a user down to the city/postal code sector level without becoming personally-identifiable. The coverage is global, accuracy is 99.99% at a country level, and the data is refreshed regularly. It is an effective business solution that is simple to integrate into content streaming platforms and manage in-house. Conversely, publically-available data has patchy global coverage, is rarely updated, and is inherently inaccurate.

It is vital for content providers to comply with digital rights licenses, either at a country or regional level, and yet many are using poor approaches that restrict content to users who should be able to view, while allowing access to those who should not. The deployment of accurate IP technology negates this issue because it accurately identifies the user’s location. At the same time, working with less accurate data providers can create false restrictions, leading to disgruntled consumers, as the Eurobarometer survey intimates.

Furthermore, accurate IP-derived connection speed data helps ensure streaming content is optimised to the viewing platform and helps eliminate the technical problems associated with delivering video or music over a range of devices and connectivity types.

To summarise, content owners can optimise the web media viewing experience and reduce negative online experiences by deploying the following IP-derived data parameters:

Geolocation 

Accurately locating web visitors down to postal code sector/zip level enables delivery of localised content and eradicates false positives while maintaining geographic rights compliance with content owners. Accuracy can only be achieved by using accredited IP data specialists monitoring the constantly changing public internet 24/7.

Connection speed

The web viewing experience can also be enhanced by optimising the content format according to the user’s connection speed and type, seamlessly providing a positive brand experience and reducing abandonment from poorly-displayed content.

Proxies

Content owners also need to protect themselves from those actively falsifying their location, but not to the detriment of other legitimate users. Proxy IPs can fluctuate within a day, and therefore daily and weekly updates to this data is necessary to minimise the risk of false positives.

Mobile

Being able to recognise the device type and/or connection type is important to optimise content delivery. Distinguishing between WiFi, fixed internet, 3G and 4G can enhance a user’s viewing experience and generate additional revenue channels while maintaining consumer loyalty.

As Europe continues to move towards an “open internet”, website and content owners need to continue to embrace IP data targeting to connect and enhance users’ online viewing experiences, whilst remaining focused on compliance and rights management. Simple, cost-effective and intelligent IP targeting is an integral component of a geographic rights management solution that protects online content owners while also building strong consumer relationships.

For more information visit info.digitalelement.com/uk

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