MSN Releases Traffic Numbers For LiveEarth Webcast, Sort Of

Dan Rayburn | Monday July 9, 2007 | 08:15 AM | Comments (2)

On Sunday, MSN put out a press release talking about the traffic to the Live Earth webcast. But as I mentioned in my previous post, the way the numbers are given out after webcasts, they don’t really accurately measure  the traffic.

The title of the release says "Live Earth Global Concerts Reach More Than 10 Million Online At MSN…" More than 10 million what, people? Apparently not. Because the details of the release then say "MSN had received a total of more than 10 million video streams." So it’s not 10 million people as viewers are making more than one request or visiting the site multiple times. So how many unique people was it? And why does it says MSN "received" the streams? MSN does not receive the streams, the receive the request for the stream.

They then say, "…and has the most simultaneous viewers of any online concert ever" but then the release does not give out any details on how many simultaneous streams they did. Why is it so hard for companies to keep from being so vague?

  • how many total stream requests did you full fill?
  • how many unique streams did you serve?
  • what was the average length of time someone watched the webcast?
  • what percentage of traffic came from what regions of the world?
  • what was the average bitrate that someone watched?

Very easy questions. Basic. These are the same questions that all customers ask their stream hosting provider after an event and gets exact figures.

Filed in Analysts, Research & Metrics, Content Delivery, Media & Entertainment | Permalink | Comments (2)