The term beacon, in the context of video streaming, is defined as the sending of analytics data to an analytics service. This delivery is done from a client application, and is typically executed in two ways:
- As a POST request, including all data within the body of the request.
- As an HTTP GET request, with the data encoded in URL query variable format.
When a program is intensively tracking the quality of video players, the client SDKs is responsible for sending the data beacons to the software servers. With this information, the main errors in the process and the players can be monitored and tracked quite effectively.
This term should not be confused with bluetooth devices also known as beacons. The latter are devices designed to transmit signals to other devices, and are used in the business world to design and execute marketing campaigns, collect user data and help with navigation.
