Summer Graduation 2019 live stream data

Lewis Wake
Wednesday 3 July 2019

Between Monday 24 and Friday 28 June 2019, nine graduation ceremonies were streamed live on the University website. These streams were accessible via YouTube and were embedded on one page of the University website. We also set up an alternative web page embedding a stream feed with lower bandwidth primarily for users who have no access to YouTube, and for users encountering potential problems with the YouTube stream.

After each ceremony had ended, each YouTube video’s privacy was set to ‘unlisted’. The videos were only publicly accessible for an average of 90 minutes each.

Here’s a breakdown of the data.


Page views of the ‘watch graduation live’ web page per country

The YouTube videos were embedded on the University website on the ‘watch graduation live‘ web page.

In total, the ‘watch graduation live’ web page had 10,094 unique page views over the five-day period.

The countries with the top ten unique page views are as follows:

Pie chart showing percentage of unique page views per country

Country Unique page views
🇬🇧 United Kingdom 6,839
🇺🇸 United States 1,040
🇩🇪 Germany 200
🇫🇷 France 167
🇮🇹 Italy 119
🇷🇺 Russia 119
🇮🇳 India 118
🇦🇪 United Arab Emirates 80
🇨🇳 China 58
🇨🇦 Canada 55

Page views within St Andrews

There were 2,010 unique page views from St Andrews of the ‘watch graduation live’ web page.

Therefore 4,829 page views were from viewers from the rest of the UK and 5,265 page views were from international viewers.

Pie chart showing percentage of unique page views per from St Andrews, the UK, and the rest of the world

Location Unique page views
In St Andrews 2,010
Rest of the UK 4,829
International 5,265

YouTube views per graduation ceremony

View counts of the nine graduation ceremonies were somewhat evenly distributed. In total, the YouTube videos had 7,344 views.

Bar chart showing views of graduation ceremonies

Country Views
Monday PM 909
Tuesday AM 1,017
Tuesday PM 527
Wednesday AM 863
Wednesday PM 829
Thursday AM 648
Thursday PM 730
Friday AM 747
Friday PM 715
Total    7,344

YouTube views per country

From the YouTube data, we can determine which parts of the world viewers were in when watching the live stream.

In total, the live stream hosted on YouTube was viewed in 96 countries.

The top ten countries the ceremonies were viewed in are as follows:

Pie chart showing YouTube views per country

Country Total playbacks
🇬🇧 United Kingdom 4,401
🇺🇸 United States 657
🇮🇳 India 243
🇷🇺 Russia 150
🇮🇪 Ireland 127
🇩🇪 Germany 125
🇫🇷 France 115
🇱🇹 Lithuania 83
🇮🇹 Italy 81
🇨🇦 Canada 67

Devices used to view YouTube videos

Users were mainly viewing the YouTube live streams on computers and laptops, although there is a high percentage of users viewing the live stream on mobile phones.

Interestingly, there was also one view from a PlayStation console.

Pie chart showing devices used to view YouTube video

Device type Views
Computer 3,958
Mobile phone 2,606
Tablet 574
TV 192
Game console 1

Browsers used to view the ‘watch graduation live’ web page

Safari was the most popular browser used to view the ‘watch graduation live’ web page.

Pie chart showing browsers used to view graduation page

Browser Unique page views
Safari 4,420
Chrome 3,395
Safari (in-app) 476
Edge 474
Firefox 454
Samsung Internet 303
Android Webview 265
Internet Explorer 222
Opera 55
Amazon Silk 15

Page views for alternative ‘watch graduation live’ web page per country

An alternative page was used to allow users who had problems with the YouTube embedded stream to view the ceremonies through FlowPlayer.

In total, the alternative live stream web page had 1,381 unique page views over the five-day period.

The countries with the top ten page views of the alternative page are displayed in the below charts.

Users from China have restricted access to YouTube. There is a direct correlation between users based in China navigating from the ‘watch graduation live’ web page (58 page views), through to the alternative web page (36 page views). 22 users based in China either chose not to view the alternative stream, or were unsuccessful in locating the link. We could make this more prominent for future ceremonies.

Pie chart showing unique page views for alternative stream page

Country Unique page views
🇬🇧 United Kingdom 922
🇺🇸 United States 151
🇨🇳 China 36
🇮🇳 India 31
🇩🇪 Germany 30
🇮🇷 Iran 22
🇷🇺 Russia 13
🇭🇺 Hungary 11
🇮🇹 Italy 11
🇨🇦 Canada 10


Conclusion

This is the first summer we offered two ways to view the live stream of the graduation ceremonies. It is clear that offering an alternative to YouTube meets a requirement in some countries, however, we could find ways to make the alternative page more apparent as there is somewhat of a significant drop-off. We will continue to offer this service for future graduation ceremonies.

The continued growth of mobile devices to view the web site and live streams means we need to continually test the web pages on a variety of devices and screen sizes to ensure they are optimised for our visitors.

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