Author Topic: Are podcasts preloading on mobile, and therefore adding "hits" in statistics?  (Read 4779 times)

danielschulzjackson

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I just started using your statistics (I have been using your podcasting for several months.)

When I checked in on our stats, it appeared as if the amount of podcast listens were 90% of the amount of pageviews. Which is just not very realistic, I don't think...

AND

My bandwidth had increased accordingly... making it seem as if it really was real, but then I realized this:

98-99% of viewership was appearing in your statistics as being mobile, and only 1% chrome, despite the fact that chrome is ~15% of our traffic.

So it seems that what is happening is that the podcasts are preloading in mobile, and therefore registering as 'hits' in statistics. Both of these are bad; wasted bandwidth, obscured statistics.

Help?

danielschulzjackson

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Also my number of listens (675) are eerily close to the number of mobile browser pageviews (775), but not to the total pageviews (1000)...

hence my hypothesis that it's preloading on mobile.

angelo

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Both Android and iOS do not pre-load audio/video in the HTML5 native players. If you are using a special player (not one in PowerPress) then there may be pre-loading happening. Otherwise no.

page views and web statistics is a completely different matrix. Learn more: http://create.blubrry.com/manual/statistics-analytics-measuring-performance/media-podcast-statistics-vs-web-statistics/

Remember, someone who visits your web site is most likely not going to watch/listen to your media. (look at the average time someone spends on your web pages to confirm this)

Someone who listens to your podcast on iTunes or Android using an app such as BeyondPod is most likely not going to visit your web site. They are subscribed to your podcast at this point, and are going to consume your podcast directly to their podcasting app, they don't open the browser to revisit.

You need to think of both measurements separately.

danielschulzjackson

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My podcast is not on iTunes or any other expternal library; they are only available from my website.
Also, we're just using default media players provided with PowerPress.
And still, I'm getting almost as many media downloads as pageviews.

Looking at these numbers, what do you conclude? It sure looks both from Blubrry statistics as well as my bandwidth usage like about 80% of visitors are playing the podcast... but only the ones on mobile... which doesn't make much sense...

I noticed that on mobile phones, the media players don't look like they do on desktop... is it possible that the mobile phones (iphone, ipad, android) are forcing their own media player onto the file and preloading it?


Here's my most popular article's statistics:
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Blubrry Statistics for: Responsible-or-Spoiled.mp3
8,501 Total Downloads
6,759 Unique Downloads

Google Analytics for: the-key-to-avoiding-entitlement/index.php
9,869 Pageviews
9,216 Unique Pageviews.

Average time on page: 3:07; audio length: 3:44;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Second most popular article's statistics:
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Google Analytics for: the-new-problem-of-entitlement/index.php
2,261 Pageviews
2,088 Unique Pageviews

Blubrry Statistics for: Entitlement.mp3
1,852 Total Downloads
1,464 Unique Downloads

Average time on page: 3:10; Audio Length: 3:14;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FYI I have purchased the premium plan, largely because I'm needing reliable support with this issue, so thanks for your help, it's much appreciated.

angelo

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You will have to share some information for me to help you further, title of your podcast, URL to the page in question where the player is, main page to your web site, anything else you think may help.

danielschulzjackson

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Post: http://connectedfamilies.org/2012/05/17/the-key-to-avoiding-entitlement/
Main Page: http://connectedfamilies.org
Blubrry Program Title: Connected Families
Blubrry Pogram Keyword: disciplinethatconnects
Feed URL: http://connectedfamilies.org/feed/podcast/

Let me know if you need some login credentials or something to that effect.

Thanks,

danielschulzjackson

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Hello?

angelo

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Still looking into the data. Please be patient.

angelo

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I confirmed all of your podcast statistics data is from your web site traffic. You are using PowerPress which adds a flag to the media redirect indicating the requests came from your web pages. So you're good to go there.

Re iOS devices preloading, you are correct, it is now preloading the audio in the audio player. Last time I tested this it did not preload.  Only guess is something has changed in iOS in the past 3-6 months.

For Android, at least with the 2 devices I tested with, it does not pre-load. That's with a Xoom tablet and a Nexus 4.

Safari browser for desktop has had this issue of ignoring the preload=none attribute in HTML5 since the beginning of it supporting HTML5 audio/video. This is why we developed the HTML5 player you see in PowerPress today that does not load the HTML5 player until the user clicks a customizable play image.

The next major release of PowerPress will use the play image method to prevent preloading. Just as a precaution, I will be deploying this for all mobile devices, but the target is obviously iOS/Safari.

danielschulzjackson

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Thanks so much for looking into this, and for planning a solution!

As far as preloading on Androids, I'm noticing that the ratio of Android to iOS is 1:4 in both all traffic (Google Analytics - 6,598 : 29,047) and podcasts (Blubrry Statistics  3,388 : 15,159), suggesting that whether or not it's preloading in Android, it's registering Blubrry hits at the same rate in Android as in iOS, and since we've verified that iOS is preloading, it's an indicator that there's something funny going on in AndroidLand.

So as of now the Blubrry Statistics aren't providing useful podcast usage statistics for me. (Except for desktop usage, which I believe is untarnished by preloading.)

That said, I'll continue to use the premium plan because I appreciate you digging into this to figure it out, and am looking forward to the resolution to these issues in the next release.

Thanks,

angelo

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okay great.

And there may be something going on in Android, I suspect non-Vanilla Android phones may not be using chrome and have a different HTML5 player behavior than that of what I tested yesterday. Either way, what we do for Safari Mobile we will do for all mobile that way I'm not adding more complications development wise. So you will be covered if that is the case.

danielschulzjackson

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Oh, roger that; the android phones I have seen all ship with their own non-chrome browser.

Anyway, the way you're going to deal with this issue cross-platform-ly seems nifty and hopeful;

My client organization members all desperately want to know when this change will transpire; do you have any ETA's on the release of this?

Also please know that we're strongly considering blubrry hosting over-against libsyn despite the significantly higher cost due to your tight and user-friendly integration with Wordpress. Thanks for all the followup,

angelo

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Sometime this week, hopefully as soon as tomorrow morning.

angelo

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And you can always install the development version of you don't want to wait.

danielschulzjackson

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Awesome! Thanks!