Statistics is hard.
Throughout the years, we've done a lot of work on sermon play statistics so that our broadcasters can be presented with the best possible reports on how sermons are being heard all around the world. We've often had to resort to employing the tools of third-party services in order to accomplish this. We've even had to recently implement countermeasures in the face of increasing bot and automated activity.
The problem with third-party services is that they are often very expensive and frequently fail to consistently deliver the up-to-the-second real-time performance crucial especially for live webcasts.
Bringing stats in-house.
So, we decided to take a stab at doing it all in-house. Over the past number of weeks, our full senior development team conducted an in-depth review of our entire stats-gathering system. This led to extensive work being done across all aspects of stats, including audio, video, and webcasting.
I am happy to announce that as of this past Sunday, we have completed all tests and are officially no longer relying on third-party logging systems! The performance is vastly improved, and we have much better control over how stats are gathered. By God's grace, I believe we’re now in the best possible situation.
Going forward.
We sincerely apologize for the past issues related to stats. Statistics are inherently complex, so we thank you for your patience. While perfection with stats is unattainable and bot activity will remain an ongoing challenge, we are confident that we are now operating from a far stronger position for the benefit of all our broadcasters.
