There are some things to bear in mind when making use of the Hivestack widget in conjunction with Signagelive's Proof of Play feature due to the manner in which impressions are logged on both services.
This article will outline how impressions for both Signagelive and Hivestack are logged and the optimum setup for running these two services together.
How Signagelive Proof of Play impressions are logged
Every time an asset completes an entire playthrough on your Signagelive Player, data is sent from your device to our dedicated Signagelive API - this logs a single impression per playthrough of an asset, which can be viewed in your Proof of Play Dashboard.
Based on the above, if you have a Hivestack Widget published to your Player and it is set to run for a duration of 30 seconds - every 30 seconds 1 impression will be logged. Suppose you have multiple Hivestack ads being served up within that 30-second window/Hivestack instance on your Player (in this example let’s say you have 3 x 10 second ads). In that case, our API will still only receive 1 impression as our Proof of Play impressions are based on the completion of the playthrough of the asset, not the individual ads being served up in that Widget.
How Hivestack impressions are logged
Hivestack’s reporting works on a confirmation of play scenario, so whenever an ad is served up and successfully plays on a device - an impression/spend is allocated to the scheduled play event when this data is sent back to the Hivestack API. This usually happens within a 60-minute window in which the device playing the ad actually plays the ad, and then sends confirmation of whether the ad playthrough was a success or not.
Optimum setup if comparing Proof of Play reports against Hivestack reports
Whilst the reporting mechanics of both of these services differ, should you wish to compare the results from both applications then we recommend that your Hivestack Widget in Signagelive has a duration that matches the duration of any ads you are serving up within the Hivestack Widget.
You’ll want to ensure that no more than a single ad runs within the Widget duration in Signagelive, as our application will only ever log 1 Proof of Play impression per playthrough of the Widget. So if you have multiple ads being served up within the duration of that Hivestack instance in Signagelive, Proof of Play will still only log 1 impression for the asset whilst your Hivestack reporting will log an impression every time an ad successfully plays through.
Other scenarios in which Hivestack reports and Proof of Play reports may not match
In the event a Hivestack Widget is deployed to a Signagelive Player and there is no ad being served up to the associated Hivestack UUID, the Hivestack Widget will be skipped due to the Widget SDK method Signagelive.requestMediaPlayerMoveToNextAsset(). It's worth noting that in this instance we would still log a Proof of Play impression on our end, whereas on Hivestack's end - no impression would be logged.