Putting things in perspective: Measuring Flash Player penetration.
Last week, when the news broke about the number of downloads “that other browser plugin” got, it got me thinking… What does that number really mean in terms of impact?. Can you really use download numbers as a way to measure how successful a technology is? The answer is “no” and the reason is very simple: A download still doesn’t mean that the user installed it.
So how does Adobe measure the impact of the Flash Player? A few months back, Emmy Huang (product manager for Flash Player) wrote a comprehensive blog post about it. Emmy wrote:
It’s interesting to note that for Adobe, the number that is quoted is an “install” and not a “download” number. [...] We have an internal dashboard application to track the general “health” of Flash Player downloads and installs, and it can chart the data daily, weekly, monthly, etc. It uses XML feeds of our server log data from Akamai, our current CDN. The dashboard is useful in helping us 1) to understand our traffic so we can try to optimize things like install success rate, and catch problems with our installers or CDN delivery in a matter of days, and 2) get a sense of where our penetration might be in the penetration study in the next wave. The penetration study is only run once a quarter, and it’s hard to wait three months to know where we’re at. [...]
For “Player downloads” we count the attempted and successful downloads for all the player installers we post to the CDN (based on the related HTTP status codes), such as “swflash.cab” and “install_flash_player.exe” (note these numbers aren’t unique.) We also count the number of installs, which is the sum of requests for a small text file that a newly installed player requests the first time it is launched in the browser. That number is used as an estimate – we’ve had releases where the text file request wasn’t implemented or working on certain platforms, and since it is only requested once there are a number of reasons why it might not make it all the way to the server. [...]
As with any statistics, you should understand the methodology behind the numbers. But the good thing about that number is it is something you or another third party like Forrester, can independently test or verify — which makes it the more interesting and important number for Flash Player.
Flash Video market share continues to grow
In a press release yesterday, comScore released the latest “Video Metrix” numbers. Once again, these numbers are record breaking and impressive!
In December 2008, Internet users in the US watched 14.3 billion online videos (yes… 14.3 billion videos in one month!). A big chunk of those were watched using Flash technology. I don’t have the specific numbers yet but looking at the list of video sites surveyed, I think it’s safe to say that Flash Video is the absolute number one video format on the web. In fact, 41 percent of all those videos were watched on YouTube.
The other numbers in this press release are absolutely amazing:
- 78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
- The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.
- 98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer). YouTube uses Flash Video.
- 48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer). MySpace uses Flash Video.
- The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes.
- The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten. Hulu uses Flash Video.
I think it’s pretty obvious that the Flash Video market share continues to grow. Then again, when 99% all internet users can watch Flash Video, why wouldn’t you use Flash Video? ;-) Go Flash!
RIAs take Christmas shopping to a whole new level
Around Christmas time, shopping malls and streets are crazy. Everyone seems to want to buy their Christmas gifts at the very last moment which usually turns this task in to a an absolute nightmare. Why not get your Christmas gifts online? I know some people will say that you can’t really browse through an online store and they are right. Well… They used to be right. There are a couple of really good examples online that let you browse an online store just as you would browse a physical store.
Amazon’s Windowshop is still in beta but is already very promising and it actually works! While preparing for this blog post, I was browsing through the Windowshop and found a book about the Obama campaign. When I clicked on it to get more information, a female voice started reading the synopsys of this book. Right after that, I bought the book.
When you click on a DVD or video game, you get a trailer to get an idea on how it looks. When you click on an album or audiobook, you hear an excerpt from it. When you like something, you just add it to your shopping cart and continue browsing. No need to wait in line to pay for your gifts, no need to wait in line to get giftwrapping. You can just do it from the comfort of your home.
The Magic Shelf on the homepage of Borders.com is another great example.
The Magic Shelf is the first thing you’ll see when you point your browser to Borders.com. It’s like the first shelves you see when you walk in to an actual Borders store. It displays all the new releases and staff picks. The Magic Shelf gives you detailed product information and customer reviews while making it easy to add the products to your wish list or shopping cart.
This is what rich internet applications (RIAs) are all about. Using the best of the web to make tasks like this easy to use and fun. And it also pays off for the retailer. First of all, they can quickly and easily update these RIAs so that their homepage is constantly changing, creating reasons for shoppers to return regularly. It also allows them to quickly respond to events (e.g. the election of a new president). By putting The Magic Shelf RIA on their homepage, Borders.com already dramatically improved their key metrics.
11% of all users are likely to recommend a product using The Magic Shelf. 41% more products are viewed and they also saw a 62% higher conversion after putting this RIA on their homepage (Source: Allurent).
I absolutely love these RIAs and wish that European e-tailers would soon follow their example. With numbers like these, they would be stupid not to…
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