Exits before video start (EBVS) counts sessions where the user pressed play, waited some amount of time, and then closed the tab or navigated away before the first frame appeared. It is typically expressed as a percentage of total play attempts. Industry benchmarks: under 2 % is excellent, 2–5 % is normal, above 8 % is alarming and indicates serious startup-time or playback failures.
EBVS and startup time are tightly coupled: every additional second of startup measurably raises EBVS. Conviva's industry reports through 2025 show roughly 5–7 % EBVS lift for each additional second of startup beyond 2 seconds. Long startup times don't just annoy viewers — they cost viewers entirely. The metric is especially important on ad-supported platforms where a missed startup means a missed ad impression and lost revenue.
Common causes of high EBVS: DRM license-server failures, CDN routing errors that produce 404s, manifest parse errors specific to certain content, paywall friction (a viewer pressed play, got hit with a sign-up modal, gave up). Diagnosing EBVS requires both player-side telemetry (what stage was reached?) and error logs from each backend service. Most analytics SDKs (Mux Data, Conviva, NPAW) break EBVS down by stage to make root-causing tractable.
The book · Volume 3 of 7
Video Streaming: A Complete Guide to Video Delivery: From ABR and CDNs to Players, WebRTC, DRM, and the Economics of Streaming
Exits before video start count viewers who gave up before seeing a single frame, which is lost audience you never get to win back. Volume 3 covers this metric in detail within QoE monitoring, together with player startup, ABR start choices, CDN caching and recovery from playback problems. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
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