Server-Side Media Playback Ping Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional broadcast media lacks granular information on advertisement viewership, making it difficult for advertisers to track campaign success and customize ads effectively, while online media advertising faces challenges in client-side impression tracking across various platforms, impacting user experience and scalability.
Innovation Solution
Implementing server-side advertisement impression tracking using 'pings' that signal client players to report playback times, allowing for granular tracking of viewership and customization of reporting frequencies, enabling differentiation of viewing time and percentage, and accommodating various platforms without requiring customized client applications.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If server-side tracking is used to send chunks or segments of video ahead of playback time, then content delivery efficiency is improved, but the ability to accurately determine playback amount is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements feedback by having the client send periodic ping signals back to the server during playback. These pings provide real-time information about the current playback position, allowing the server to accurately determine how much content has been played despite having sent chunks ahead of time. This feedback mechanism resolves the contradiction by enabling precise measurement without compromising delivery efficiency.
Solution Approach 2:
The ping signal acts as an intermediary mechanism between the client and server. Instead of the server directly tracking playback on its end, the intermediary ping signals carry playback position information from the client back to the server, enabling accurate measurement while maintaining the efficient chunk-based delivery system.
2Loss of information
If client-side tracking is implemented with specialized client player applications, then granular advertisement impression information is obtained, but device complexity and user burden increase due to requiring multiple specialized applications
Solution Approach 1:
The system makes the media player application universal by integrating advertisement impression tracking capabilities into the standard player itself. The same media player that plays video content also handles tracking by sending ping signals, eliminating the need for separate specialized tracking applications. This multi-functionality resolves the contradiction by maintaining information granularity while reducing device complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The system merges the advertisement tracking function with the existing media player application. Instead of having separate specialized client players for tracking, the tracking functionality is combined into the standard media player, allowing granular impression tracking without requiring users to install and manage multiple specialized applications.
3Device complexity
If traditional broadcast media transmission is used, then infrastructure simplicity is maintained, but granular advertisement viewership information cannot be obtained
Solution Approach 1:
The system introduces feedback by implementing a return communication channel from client to server through ping signals. This allows the server to receive playback position information that would otherwise be unavailable in traditional one-way broadcast media, enabling granular viewership tracking while maintaining relatively simple infrastructure.
4Device complexity
If online media delivery platform sends whole files without segmentation, then implementation simplicity is maintained, but ability to ascertain playback amount is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system uses feedback through periodic ping signals from the client to the server to track playback position. This allows the server to determine accurate playback amounts even when files are sent as whole units, maintaining implementation simplicity while achieving precise measurement through the feedback mechanism.
Data Source
AI summary
Server side content impression progression tracking is performed using ping triggers and pings. A server generates ping triggers for content based on an impression list from a configuration provided by the content originator. The server sets different times at which the ping triggers are to fire during content playback. When media playback on a client reaches a time set for a ping trigger, the ping trigger causes the client to return a ping to the server to indicate that playback has reached the designated time. In this manner, the pings granularly track content viewership on different clients, wherein the granular tracking measures not only whether content was viewed or not, but also how much of the content was viewed. Subsequent content to a particular client can be customized based on preferences derived from pings tracked from the particular client.