Winter Graduation 2018 live stream data
On Thursday 6 and Friday 7 December 2018, four 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 setup an alternative webpage 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 video was embedded on the University website on the ‘watch graduation live‘ web page. This year we set up an alternative webpage for users who had restricted access from YouTube based on their geographic location, or encountered any problems with the YouTube live stream. This separate feed was embedded on the webpage using Flowplayer.
The countries with the top ten page views are as follows:
| Country | Unique page views |
| United Kingdom | 1,551 |
| Germany | 507 |
| United States of America | 191 |
| China | 123 |
| Italy | 64 |
| Austria | 60 |
| India | 54 |
| Netherlands | 44 |
| Canada | 36 |
| Thailand | 36 |
Page views within the St Andrews network
In total, the ‘watch graduation live webpage had 3,214 page views over the two day period.
There 716 unique page views from St Andrews of the ‘watch graduation live’ webpage.
Therefore 835 page views were from viewers from the rest of the UK and 1,663 page views were from international viewers.
| Location | Unique page views |
| In St Andrews | 716 |
| Rest of the UK | 835 |
| International | 1,663 |
YouTube views per graduation ceremony
View counts of the four graduation ceremonies were evenly distributed. In total, the YouTube videos had 1,974 views.
| Country | Views |
| Thursday AM | 543 |
| Thursday PM | 473 |
| Friday AM | 527 |
| Friday PM | 431 |
| Total | 1,974 |
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 71 countries.
The top ten countries the ceremonies were viewed in are as follows:
| Country | Total playbacks |
| United Kingdom | 1,026 |
| Germany | 309 |
| United States of America | 148 |
| India | 56 |
| Austria | 50 |
| Thailand | 42 |
| Italy | 36 |
| France | 28 |
| Sri Lanka | 28 |
| Bangladesh | 25 |
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.
There were also two unique views from PlayStation consoles as YouTube apps are also accessible on game consoles.
| Device type | Views |
| Computer | 1,135 |
| Mobile phone | 693 |
| Tablet | 127 |
| TV | 17 |
| Game console | 2 |
Browsers used to view the ‘watch graduation live’ web page
Google Chrome and Safari were almost equally used to view the ‘watch graduation live’ web page. Both are popular browsers on computers and iOS devices.
| Browser | Unique page views |
| Chrome | 1141 |
| Safari | 1130 |
| Firefox | 240 |
| Safari (in-app) | 188 |
| Android Webview | 157 |
| Edge | 133 |
| Internet Explorer | 103 |
| Samsung Internet | 96 |
| Opera | 10 |
| Android Browser | 7 |
Page views for alternative ‘watch graduation live’ web page per country
The countries with the top five 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 (123 page views), through to the alternative web page (102 page views). A minor drop off, but overall a success to distribute the live stream to users based in China.
| Country | Unique page views |
| United Kingdom | 189 |
| China | 102 |
| Germany | 73 |
| United States of America | 41 |
| Poland | 12 |
Conclusion
This year was the first time we offered two ways to view the live stream of the graduation ceremonies. It is clear that offering an alternative to YouTube meets a user need for countries like China. 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 platforms to ensure they are optimised for our visitors.