This document discusses context monitoring and its potential to improve quality of experience (QoE) for HTTP adaptive streaming. It defines context as any information that helps determine a user, network, or device situation. Context influence factors include physical, temporal, social, economic, task, and technical characteristics. The document presents a case study on using context monitoring to improve QoE during video flash crowds. It describes a simulation model of an HTTP adaptive streaming system with two content delivery networks and proposes using context data on the number of users per network to improve load balancing during flash crowds. The results show context monitoring can significantly improve performance and QoE compared to approaches without this context data.