Predicting Online Video Engagement Using Clickstreams

Abstract

In the nascent days of e-content delivery, having a superior product was enough to give companies an edge against the competition. With today's fiercely competitive market, one needs to be multiple steps ahead, especially when it comes to understanding consumers. Focusing on a large set of web portals owned and managed by a private communications company, we propose methods by which these sites' clickstream data can be used to provide a deep understanding of their visitors, as well as their interests and preferences. We further expand the use of this data to show that it can be effectively used to predict user engagement to video streams.