Playback score
A playback score rates whether a view succeeded at all. A view that played counts fully, a view the viewer abandoned before start counts partly, and a view that hit an error counts as a failure. Averaged across many views, it shows what share of play attempts actually turned into watching.
Why it matters
Playback score answers the most basic question leadership asks: when people pressed play, did it work? It folds failures and abandonment into one reliability figure, making it easy to spot a broken release or a market where many play attempts never become watching.
How it works
- Every play attempt becomes a view with one of three outcomes.
- A view that reaches the first frame and plays counts as a success.
- A view abandoned before the first frame counts as a partial failure; a view with an error counts as a full failure.
- Scores for all views are averaged to show the share of attempts that turned into watching.
Playback score vs QoE score: what is the difference?
Playback score measures whether a view played at all; QoE score measures how good playback was once it started. A service can have a high playback score but poor QoE if videos start reliably but buffer often. Tracking both separates reliability problems from quality problems.
How is a playback score calculated?
A playback score is calculated by giving each view a value based on its outcome and averaging the values. For example, if a successful view counts 1, an exit before start counts 0.5 and an error counts 0, then 90 successes, 6 early exits and 4 errors give an average of 0.93.
Where it's used
News publishers and OTT services use playback score as a reliability number for leadership, because it answers the simplest question: when people pressed play, did it work?
Where it usually goes wrong, and how FastPix handles it
Error rates alone miss viewers who gave up before the video started, so reported reliability looks higher than the real experience.
FastPix Video Data scores each view by outcome: a successful playback scores 1, an exit before video start scores 0.5 and an error scores 0. The averages can be broken down by device, browser and region. Leadership gets one reliability number that counts viewers who gave up, not just hard failures.
