“As content owners race to deploy OTT solutions in the rapidly-evolving online television world, quality of experience is now as vital as quality of content,” said Hui Zhang, CEO of Conviva, on the release of the company’s third annual Viewer Experience Report.

“Content companies and publishers who are moving swiftly to working with syndication partners — operators, distribution outlets such as Apple’s iTunes, connected TV devices such as Roku and Amazon Fire TV, and many others — need to be hyper-vigilant to consistent quality of experience across every outlet,” said Zhang.

Conviva, a firm in Foster City, California that specializes in the optimization of OTT video, had several key findings in its report:

— Video start failures are at a four-year low. Views impacted by such failures dropped to 2.0 percent from 2.6 percent in early 2015

— Picture fidelity continues to climb. The global bitrate has grown an additional 19 percent since the beginning of this year.

— Experience syndication is the new must-have. Utilizing a third party platform, which can report both to content providers and to operators with transparent and objective numbers, will be the foundation upon which a common understanding of the viewer experience will be built.

Conviva said the findings of the mid-year 2015 Viewer Experience Report demonstrate that content providers and publishers need an ability to measure the quality of their viewers’ experience, as well as to optimize for local expectations, both for quality and cost containment purposes.

A copy of the free report is available here.