---
title: Introduction to Streaming Video & Ads
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/streaming-video-&-ads/introduction-to-streaming-video-&-ads
---

Streaming Video & Ads monitoring is a New Relic solution that measures Quality of Experience (QoE) metrics as end users stream content. Monitor video performance across players, devices, operating systems, and networks.

## Key benefits

-   **Track quality of experience metrics**: Monitor rebuffering ratio, start time, bitrate, and watch time to measure streaming quality
-   **Measure viewer satisfaction**: Use QoE health index to assess overall viewer experience with a composite metric
-   **Monitor across all platforms**: View streaming performance data for Browser, Android, iOS, and Roku applications in a unified dashboard or drill down into individual platform metrics
-   **View geographic engagement**: Track concurrent viewers by platform and visualize video engagement across global regions to understand audience distribution
-   **Troubleshoot with user sessions**: Access individual user session details with error counts to diagnose specific playback failures, high start times, and buffering issues
-   **Identify quality issues**: Quickly identify and resolve streaming problems using quality metrics dashboards

![Streaming Video & Ads monitoring dashboard showing performance metrics](https://docs.newrelic.com/images/media-overview-1.webp "Visualizing data")

## Get started

New to New Relic? Sign up for a free account.

Ready to install? Use the guided installer for quick setup, or view the installation guide for manual configuration.

[Sign up](https://newrelic.com/signup)

[Guided install](https://onenr.io/0vwBaXaV2Qp)

[Installation guide](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/streaming-video-&-ads/installation/install-the-streaming-video-&-ads-agent)

## What you can monitor

### Video performance metrics

-   **Quality of Experience (QoE) health index**: Composite metric measuring overall viewer satisfaction based on rebuffering, start time, and playback quality
-   **Rebuffering ratio**: Track the proportion of playback time spent buffering (%)
-   **Video attempts**: Monitor total number of video playback attempts
-   **Average bitrate**: Measure streaming quality in Mb/s
-   **Average start time**: Track initial video load performance in milliseconds
-   **Average watch time**: Monitor average viewing duration per session (minutes)
-   **Video start failure**: Identify failed video initialization attempts

### Viewer insights

-   **Concurrent viewers by platform**: Track viewer counts across platforms over time
-   **Video engagement**: View geographic distribution of viewers worldwide
-   **User sessions**: Monitor individual user sessions with playback errors, buffering events, and start failures
-   **Exits before video start**: Track viewers who leave before playback begins

### Quality metrics

-   **High start time**: Identify slow video initialization exceeding acceptable thresholds
-   **Playback failures**: Track errors during video playback

Monitor streaming performance data to troubleshoot viewer-visible problems and optimize content delivery.

## Visualize your data

Visualize video performance and ad delivery, user engagement insights, and quality assurance metrics across your streaming stack.

The all-platform view dashboard provides a unified overview of your streaming performance across Browser, Android, iOS, and Roku

## What's next?

Follow this path to get started with Streaming Video & Ads monitoring:

[Review compatibility requirements](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/streaming-video-&-ads/installation/compatibility-requirements)

Verify your platform and video player are supported

[Install the Streaming Video & Ads agent](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/streaming-video-&-ads/installation/install-the-streaming-video-&-ads-agent)

Set up monitoring for Browser, Android, iOS, or Roku

[View your data](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/streaming-video-&-ads/view-data-in-newrelic/streaming-video-&-ads-features)

Explore monitoring features and dashboards