The Historical Report provides you with a breakdown of your stations' analytical data, including the performance of each stream, your audiences' listening habits and their geographic location, to name a few. There are a few terms used in the report that could easily confuse. We'll look at each of these below.
To run a new report follow the steps detailed in our Generating a Historical Report In Portal article.
Report Sections Explained
Reach Map
The shaded areas of the reach map indicate regions that have logged at least 1 active session. Hover your cursor over these regions for more detail.
Stream Breakdown
This section will show your listenership broken down into your stations' constituent streams.
Day Breakdown
This section will show your station's total listenership by day for the period selected.
The Day breakdown only shows a maximum of 14 days in one single report. If the timeframe of the report you have run is longer than 14 days, the Day Breakdown will be truncated to show the last 14 days of the period selected.
Hour Breakdown
This section pulls session data from your daily listenership and shows sessions by the hour for the period selected. This gives you insight into your most popular listening times over the given period.
The Hour Breakdown can only pull data from a maximum of 14 days in one single report. If the timeframe of the report you have run is longer than 14 days, the Hour Breakdown will only use session data from the last 14 days of the period selected.
Country Breakdown
This section will show your total listenership's session data broken down by country.
Platform Breakdown
This section will show your total listenership's session data broken down by platform. In this context, platform refers to the client that is used by the listener to access the stream.
Device Breakdown
This section will show your total listenership's session data broken down by device.
Devices are broader categorisations of Platforms in the previous report. They fall into one of four categories, Mobile, Desktop, Home Entertainment (including smart speakers, hi-fis and Smart TVs) and, for when no device data is gathered from the session log.
Report Metrics Explained
Please note that not all metrics are available for each section.
Active Sessions
Active Sessions have a 60-second filter applied in an attempt to provide insight into valid and engaged listeners. This is especially important for customers who monetise their online audience as this is the metric advertisers are interested in and rate 'valid audience' at.
Sessions Started
Sessions Started have a 1-second filter applied to minimise the data-skewing effects of snooper bots or traffic manipulation. This means that a listener has to remain connected to the stream for at least 1 second before they will be counted as a valid session start.
Total Listening Hours
Total Listening Hours is the total time listeners remained connected and is based on sessions of at least 60 seconds in duration (Active Sessions)
Bounce Rate
The Bounce Rate refers to the percentage of listeners not converted from Session Started to Active Sessions. Said more plainly, the Bounce Rate represents listeners who listened for less than 60 seconds but more than 1 second. A high Bounce Rate can be due to a number of causes, some of them listed below:
- Listener interest;
- Website accessibility and reliability;
- A listener's internet connectivity and stability;
- Stream availability
Certain 3rd party directories like radio.garden are conducive to listener behaviour that could encourage a high bounce rate as listeners skim past your stream and connect for a better of seconds while the browse the site.
What percentage of Bounce Rate is considered to be a 'good' Bounce Rate is subjective to the person viewing the data. There are certain scenarios where a high Bounce Rate might be expected and others where it is not.
Simple actions you can take to reduce your Bounce Rate percentage include:
- Reviewing the most popular platforms used by your listeners to access your stream to ensure the listener experience is smooth and without unexpected errors; and
- Ensuring you are using the correct load-balanced listen-links provided by the Support Team to distribute your stream.
Session Peak
Session Peak refers to the maximum number of listeners connected at the same time. When reviewing this data over a longer time period, for example, a week, the Session Peak will refer to a single Session Peak observed over that week. No filters are applied to Session Peaks.
Average Listening Time
Average Listening Time is the total time listeners remained connected based on the Total Listening Hours and the number of Active Sessions observed.
Unique Users
Unique Users refer to listeners accessing the stream from a unique IP address. Generally speaking, people in the same office block or household use the same IP address as they are on the same network and will count as a single Unique User. Listeners who are travelling between networks will see their IP address change as they move through a city, for example, and each new IP address will register as an additional Unique User. IP addresses are assigned by Internet Service Providers and SharpStream has no control over this assignation.