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How would you measure the success of YouTube TV?

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Description: Youtube TV is a prime monthly subscription based offering that offers live TV, DVR and on-demand video. 

Goal: The product was launched in 2017 and the goal would likely be on retention followed by acquisition of new customers. The way to do this is to enhance the product portfolio with increased number of channels offered. 

Scope: For the scope of this question, let us focus on non-operational goals (not acquiring new partners) but enhance the retention and acquisition and activation.

Users: Youtube TV is trying to replace cable TV and box setups. In US, the trend of "cutting the cord" seems to be increasing with customers opting for streaming services and/or online video offerings.

Since the subscription offers up to 6 profiles under single account, it is worth looking at account level statistics as a way of data grouping.

1. Highly Active Accounts: Accounts with combind usage of over 12 hours a day.

2. Moderately Active Accounts: Accounts with combind usage of over 8 hours a day.

3. Low Active Accounts: Accounts with combind usage of under 4 hours a day.

4. Inactive Accounts: Accounts with 0 hours usage.

Metrics That Matter:

StageMetrics That Matter
AcquisitionChannels driving traffic (Search/Youtube..)
Customer Acquisition Cost per channel
ActivationActive and Inactive users
Monthly unique visitors
New signups every month
Free to paid conversion rate
RetentionChurn Rate
Monthly recurring revenue
ReferralsNet promoter score
No. of referred customers.
RevenueCustomer Lifetime value
 

Summary: Focusing on the retention metrics ahead of acquisition and activation will focus on fine tuning product offering so the churn rate is reduced. 

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Things you did well

  • Great description of the product: Good summary of the product, its objective and what it does 
  • Overview of the user journey: You walked through the user journey and highlighted the relevant metrics for each phase of the user journey which was great

Areas of Improvement

  • User groups: If you are breaking down users into multiple user groups, make sure to pick one of them otherwise your user grouping is not helping you answer the question. I noticed here that you listed the user groups but did not refer to them in the metrics selection
  • Goal: It's better to pick one goal than two. Also, I would have picked engagement as engagement will generally result in retention and monetization. 
  • Engagement: I would also list metrics around engagement. For example, avg time spent per day is important   
  • Evaluate your metrics: After listing out the metrics, evaluate them based on some meaningful metric such as impact, reach, revenue impact, etc and then suggest your primary and secondary metrics to track. You won't be able to track and optimize all these metrics at the same time. 
I hope it helps. 
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WHAT

YouTube TV is an internet TV that includes channels from cable for a monthly subscription.

It competes with Comcast, Dish, and etc.

You can watch YouTube TV on desktop, mobile, or connected devices.

Assumption: YouTube TV has launched so it’s not a new product.  We are talking about the overall service, not platform apps (like Apple TV YouTube)

WHY Google created this product to enter a new market for OTT. They already have video technology and the brand to easily introduce and launch this product. Cable television felt more like a monopoly and now it has a competitive offering. 

Google mission: organize the information of the world and make it accessible. You can view TV content as information and making it accessible without needing a cable box or a TV. 

YouTube mission: give everyone a voice and show the world. The content of each channel is a way to give channels a voice and an opportunity to show the world. 

GOAL MONETIZE: New revenue opportunity with a new market USAGE: engagement GROWTH: user bases

*** Let’s focus on usage (engagement) ***

 

USER SEGMENTS

1.) Cord Cutters: You can split by

  1. Age groups

Miliniuems

Adults

Senior Citizens

  1. Usage

High activity (Watch daily, 2+ more hours)

Medium (Watch daily, 1 hour)

Low (Watch weekly)

2.) YouTube/Google

  1. Advertising

    1. Revenue

    2. Impressions

    3. New format & audience

  2. Users

    1. New audience

    2. More data about their users

  3. Engagement

    1. Increase daily usage amongst existing users

    2. Average watch time

    3. Number of videos watched

3.) Channels

  1. Users

    1. Retain

    2. New users

  2. Revenue through ads or subscription rev share

  3. More data for analytics or on users

*** Do you prefer to pick a specific segment? ***

I would like to pick USAGE

 

[USAGE] METRICS

  1. Minutes watched per week (overall usage)

= total minutes in a week / total number of weekly users

  1. Number of videos watched per week

= total videos watched per week / total number of weekly users

  1. Number of channels watched per week

= total channels per week / total numbers of weekly users

  1. Users by per platform (web, TV, mobile) 

  2. Avg platforms by per user

  3. Users by age group, geolocation, gender

[COUNTER] METRICS

  1. Cancelations or slow growth on YouTube Red

  2. Engagement decrease on YouTube (active users drops b/c watching TV now)

  3. A decrease in impressions and ad revenue for YouTube

SUCCESS

Since the chosen goal was usage (engagement). 

I would choose AVE MINS WATCHED PER WEEK b/c:

 

  • Because it can not be gamed (videos watched 100 but total time watched 10 mins)

  • Number of users does not indicate success (we don't know usage by total users)

  • To compare, compare MINUTES WATCHED to other products and also to YouTube

  • More ads are seen (impressions)

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Basic Assumptions 
  • Youtube TV is a subscription based platform that provides video content from 70+ TV channels. It also contains documentaries and movies.
  • Youtube TV  is an added feature on the Youtube Website/App and it is accessible via desktop and mobile.
  • Performance metrics for Youtube TV are just for a single region. Let's assume the US.
Important Metrics to Measure
 
  • Daily Active Users: Are the number of users who use the Youtube App going down/going up/remaining constant week over week(WoW)? How do these numbers change by device type(mobile/desktop)? 
  • Average Session Time : How does the distribution of average time spent by a user on Youtube TV change WoW by device type? 
  • % Returning Users : What % of users are returning users? How does this percentage change WoW by device?
  • Distribution of average watch type per user : Distribution of average watch time per user WoW by device type.
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Description: Youtube TV is subscription service that enables users to view entertainment channels through youtube TV app. It does not require any new hardware and also is advertisement free. Available platform is tablet, smart TV, mobile. The product shows vidoes by genres and based on your past viewing history.

Goal: Since Youtube TV has been around for a while, the Goal of the app is to acquire new users and retain existing users. Since acquiring is more of a marketing issue, i will focus on retaining existing users.

Users: People who want to watch TV during commute, people who want to watch TV with family and do not want to buy cable/subscription services

User Journey: People who are watching TV during commute, want to watch something that ideally they can finish during their commute; people who are watching it in the evening/lesiure time want to watch something. The typical problem for a user is that there are too many choices and hard to find the content they want and discover new content

Metrics: Since it is a subscription service, there are no third party advt. and the stake holders are content producers and consumers.

We will focus on retaing the users, so we focus on mertrics for consumers

For the viewer; the metrics - total hours of tv watched ( => indicates they are finding relevant content); 

# of daily active users (=> DAU should be counted only if the user has watched a TV for 10 minutes or more; > this is more of a hypothesis but some data should be analyzed if watching more than 10 minutes results in people completeing the episode/movie. 

# of time spent in finding new content (what to do if users are sharing account - > may result in poor recommendations)

# of time the first recommendation screen resulted in a viewing session

In summary, to ensure that Youtube TV app is helping customers find the entertainment of their choice, I wold focus on DAU and total time spent on watching TV/user/session.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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