What are the key metrics to be captured for a streaming service product?
- Bina Campos
- Describe product/feature and ask clarifications
Understanding :
- Streaming service – Resources offered to users over the internet through a device
- Scope of Metrics – Covers entire product and not just a feature in a product
Clarifications:
- App type : Mobile/Desktop (assume Mobile)
- Offering : Audio/Video (assume Audio)
- Platform : iOS/Android (assume both)
- Revenue model : Free/Paid (assume Freemium)
- Define goals
Question is quite broad, so let us measure metrics for entire product. Overall goal would be to have a well adopted streaming product with healthy number of paid users.
3 & 4. User journey & Related Metrics
Focussing on metrics in user journey:
– Acquisition : Number of app installs
– Activation/Adoption : First stream, setting up playlist
– Engagement : monthly active users, frequency of daily/weekly login, time spent every session, accessing diversified content
– Retention : 6 month user retention
– Monetization : % of paid users, time taken for conversion
– Referral : number of referrals, number of referral conversions
- Evaluate Metrics
Evaluating some of the metrics mentioned above
| Metrics | Significance to Product Objectives | Confidence in Accuracy of metric | Level of effort to measure metric |
| Number of app installs |
High | Medium | Low |
| First stream | Medium | Low | Low |
| Playlists creation | Low | Low | Low |
| MAU | High | High | Medium |
| Freq of login | High | Medium | Low |
| Time spent | High | Medium | Low |
| Accessing diversified content | Medium | Medium | Medium |
| 6 month user retention | Medium | Medium | Low |
| % of paid users | High | High | Low |
| Conversion rate | High | High | Low |
| Number of referrals | Medium | Low | Low |
| Referral conversions | High | High | Low |
- Prioritize Metrics
MAU – Key metric to analyze how engaged users are on a monthly basis
Frequency of login – tells us stickiness of the app with respect to a user
Time spent on app – Allows us to understand quantitative engagement
% of paid users – important metric for revenue
Referral conversions – Understand how many people are willing to install app based on referrals from their friends and family.

Netflix