Vid.ly Extends API with View Statistics

Sebastian Spier, February 13th, 2012

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Vid.ly, a service of Encoding.com, offers services like video transcoding, device detection, delivery, and storage. The company announced an extension of its Vid.ly API, to allow Vid.ly Pro customers to retrieve view statistics of their videos. According to Jeff Malkin, president of Encoding.com, this has been “the most highly-anticipated feature request” since the launch of Vid.ly Pro last summer.

Besides the press release about the new API call, Vid.ly founder and CEO Greggory Heil also provides further insights into the implementation details of the new GetStatistics API call in a blog post. According to Heil, the API allows the retrieval of the following data points for videos shared via Vid.ly:

• Vendor (Desktop or Mobile)
• Model (Mobile Device Manufacturer, Apple)
• Platform (Mobile Brand, iPhone)
• OS (Operating System, Windows)
• Browser (Browser, Firefox)
• Browser Ver (Browse, 9.0.1)
• Hits (Number of video plays)

As Vid.ly is collecting viewership data across 6,000 mobile devices and browsers, the company is also able to provide other interesting analytics. According to a press release of the company in January, the aggregated view statistics have revealed a dramatic increase of users accessing Vid.ly videos from Android OS-based devices versus Apple iOS devices.

This shows again, data is everything, and APIs make data accessible. We are looking forward to more interesting analytics from Vid.ly and Encoding.com in the coming months.

Photo credit: Video Viewership Analytics by Vid.ly