What is the difference between AV - Playbacks / AV - Plays / AV Sessions ?

Piano Analytics provides multiple AV (audio/video) metrics that look similar but answer different questions. The key distinction is whether you want to measure user intent/interactions (clicking play) or actual media consumption (time progressed).

AV - Playbacks (content actually consumed)

AV - Playbacks = Number of Audio/Video sessions for which content was consumed.

Consumed time is calculated as the sum of the differences between av_duration and av_previous_duration in the hits sent for an Audio/Video session (equivalent to detecting a positive cursor/time progression during playback). If the time consumed is 0, then the session is not taken into account in this calculation.

In practice, this corresponds to counting distinct av_session_id where consumption occurred (for example, where an av_cursor_difference is greater than 0).

Important implications

• A single AV session can contain multiple play/pause/resume actions, but it will typically count as one playback as long as it’s the same av_session_id and the content is consumed.

• At least two AV hits are generally required to measure consumption (one initial hit and a subsequent hit that allows the platform to compute a difference). If only one hit is sent, time progression cannot be computed, which can lead to 0 playbacks.

AV - Sessions (all sessions, even with zero consumption)

AV - Sessions = Number of Audio/Video sessions.

A session is created from the first Audio/Video event, even if no Audio/Video content was consumed.

A session is closed after a STOP. As soon as the content consumed changes, a session is created.

Note on session ID management

The av_session_id is typically managed automatically by the SDK. Depending on your implementation and session lifecycle (for example, if a session is not explicitly stopped), a single av_session_id may span more than one site visit. This can affect how you interpret averages that use playbacks as the denominator.

AV - Plays (play button clicks / play events)

AV - Plays = Number of av.plays events over all Audio/Video sessions and playbacks.

This corresponds to the number of clicks on a play button:

• at the start of a playback, or

• to resume playing content after pausing, for example.

Because a user may pause and resume multiple times, AV - Plays is often higher than AV - Playbacks.