In a fragmented CTV landscape, delivering the best possible viewing experiences depends on understanding the devices audiences use. For CTV apps and publishers, it is essential that they accurately identify devices so they can serve high-quality content across all screens that can support it.
Today, many CTV publishers depend on making API calls from their player apps to the host device to understand its capabilities. This is particularly important for large screens/living room contexts where serving the highest resolution content delivers the best user experience. Therefore, an optimized viewing experience leads to higher engagement and retention. Although this approach is feasible for platforms, it can become costly and challenging.
Below we outline the approach followed by most CTV publishers for device detection in comparison to a rich, device intelligence solution.
The CTV/API Process
The current process many CTV publishers follow to identify player apps is inefficient, becoming a growing resource cost over time.
The typical flow: The player app makes a call to the TV API to request information, such as whether it supports H265, HLS, VP9, or AV1. Depending on what the TV can support, the player app requests and plays the appropriate version of the content. The goal here is to deliver the best experience that the TV can support.
The implication: the player app has to know how to retrieve this information for any device it is integrated with. In practice, it is only realistic to cover mainstream OEMs and platforms. A further complication is that with OS updates on devices, the API can also change so the player app has to be updated to accommodate this.
Overall, it becomes a significant challenge (i.e. cost) to maintain the player’s ability to connect to the wide range of APIs across OEMs, particularly the different versions as they evolve over time. As a result, non-mainstream OEMs and older models aren’t supported, simply for practical cost reasons.
The business implication: it becomes a lot harder to offer services in other territories where different OEMs can dominate.
But there is another way. Many companies such as Netflix and Brightcove, use DeviceAtlas to know the accurate capabilities of the end user device, the instant it connects to their services. Instead of needing to probe the device, a simple lookup in a locally-deployed DeviceAtlas instance returns the full capability set. This enables immediate decision-making on the optimum bit rate and/or encoding version to serve. Relying on high-maintenance player app APIs for CTV device capability increases cost and complexity, while DeviceAtlas offers precise device capability lookups in real time.
Key Advantages of Device Intelligence
If CTV publishers use device intelligence during the process above, they do not need to maintain different API integrations for different OEMs, across current and historical versions. Additionally, they receive high coverage for older models and globally diverse brands.
Opportunity for ROI
1. Reduce maintenance costs of API versions in the player apps, freeing up resources for higher-value innovation.
2. Expand to new markets with less barriers to geographic territories.
3. Improve customer satisfaction by serving high-quality experiences on minor brands and older models.
To learn more about how DeviceAtlas can reduce engineering resources and improve user experiences in the CTV ecosystem, contact us.