Understanding Content through the Lens of Your Customer Attention Index

Content is the core of a video-based business. Smart marketing and a sleek UI may attract users to your service, but they will not stay unless you deliver on your promise to entertain them. So, how do you measure which content captures their attention and increases their subscription renewals? Answer: the Attention Index.

At Brightcove Audience Insights, we think the continued subscription of your customers and evidence of their enjoyment of content best reflects the value they place on your service. The challenge only lies in correlating the observed viewing behaviors and customer subscription length. The Insights Scorecard is built by connecting these disparate data sets. We are excited to demonstrate how we help you see your content in this way.

Attention Index Provides Immediate Insights

attention index iconYour content needs to be promoted correctly as soon as it enters availability. To meet this requirement, we have just added an Attention Index column to our “Content Catalog” (Fig. 2) and “Content Explorer” Insights to allow for immediate feedback on the value your content provides to audience members. This is a powerful metric that ignores the Audience Size and the fuzzy information from Average Completion to help you immediately know whether your content’s audience recognizes and enjoys the video.

The Attention Index measures the effectiveness of the promise a title and thumbnail makes – “You’re going to enjoy this!” Your subscriber provides their attention in hopes of being entertained and it’s the content’s job to deliver on that promise. This index is on a scale of -100 to 100 and compares the number of dissatisfied viewers, who watch at least 1 minute of the video but do not get to at least 10%, with the number who watch at least 75% completion. The calculation subtracts the percentage of dissatisfied viewers from the percentage of satisfied viewers, ignoring the ‘meh in the middle’ folks.

Content Explorer 2.0

For example, the fictional video “Dinosaurs Attack!” that, despite its exciting title, is a dry exploration of dinosaur hunting behaviors. Let’s say 40% of the people who start watching this hour-long title quit between 1 and 10 minutes. 10% of the viewers really like dinosaurs and watch all the way to the credits, which start about 95% of the way through. 10 minus 40 gives this content a -30 Attention Index score. It reflects the mismatch between the promise of the metadata and the reality of the video. Popular, well-watched content tends to have scores greater than 50, while scores of 30 or lower indicate that your editors might consider updating the metadata to better match the video to the audience who views it.

This Attention Index gives your editors immediate insight into content that is well targeted and really resonates with your audience. This can help to uncover hidden gems in your library, which are worthy of additional promotion. Or, it can help you identify content to de-emphasize. Content licensing decisions also become easier with a better understanding of how your audience values each video. 

Taken together, the Attention Index for classes, events, titles, movies, and series help you manage and value your content library throughout its lifecycle.