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You might think, “YouTube tracking looks simple, but I have a different embedded video player on my website.
#Youtube html5 video player how to#
How to track Vimeo video player with Google Tag Manager (custom solution) Note: If you want to use these details in your GA4 reports, don’t forget to register parameters as video_percent or video_title as custom dimensions because for some reason, they are still not available by default.Ĭhapter 2. If yes, confirm this by navigating to Google Analytics 4 DebugView to check if the events have registered there. If you don’t see them, read this troubleshooting guide.Ĭlick one of them and check whether your Google Analytics tag has fired. Enable the Preview and Debug mode, and navigate to the section of the page with the video player.įirst, you should start seeing Youtube Video events in the preview mode. Once you have completed all previous steps, it’s time to test. In the triggering section, I select the previously created Youtube video trigger. I (once again) decided to follow the naming convention of Enhanced Measurement. If you think that some of them are not valuable, go ahead and remove that. All the event parameters that I have included are optional.In the previous steps, I had only mentioned three details to capture – the start/ completion of the video and the percentage of video watched. I recommend following the same naming convention for video tracking used in Enhanced Measurement.In Google Tag Manager, go to Tags > New > Google Analytics: GA4 Event and enter the following settings. Now, it’s time to send the Youtube video data to Google Analytics. In Google Tag Manager, go to Variables > Configure and enable all video-related variables. user watched 25% of the video).Īlso, even though the Add JavaScript API support to all Youtube videos is an Advanced setting, I enable it by default because it increases the chance that Youtube video tracking will work. I typically track Start, Complete, and Progress (e.g. Also, you can enable Pause, Seeking, and Buffering tracking. You can change the Percentage threshold to anything you like just separate them with a comma. In Google Tag Manager, go to Triggers > New > Trigger Configuration and choose Youtube Video, then enter the following settings: Why would you want to configure Youtube tracking with GTM and GA4 if GA4 already offers built-in functionality? Well, GA4’s built-in Youtube video does not work on all websites, so sometimes, you might need to customize it. Here are the steps you need to complete to track Youtube videos with Google Tag Manager.
#Youtube html5 video player download#
Download it, import, configure it (according to instructions), and it will automatically start tracking Youtube videos on your website in no time.īut if you want to understand the ins and outs of Youtube video tracking, then continue reading. If you are in a hurry, I have created a ready-made Youtube video tracking recipe. How to track Youtube videos with Google Tag Manager Then, I’ll show you how it’s done with a video player that GTM does not support by default – Vimeo.Īnd finally, I’ll also give you some ready-made solutions (recipes) designed for various embedded video players.Ĭhapter 1. Six GTM Video Tracking Recipesįirst, we’ll look at the most common video tracking example in Google Tag Manager: Youtube video trigger. Data Layer Variables and a Custom Event Trigger Create a variable “Is Vimeo player present on a page”
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At the end of the article, I will also share ready-made GTM templates/recipes. I’ll cover Youtube video tracking, Vimeo video tracking, and several other players as well. I’ll show you how to track videos with Google Tag Manager. That’s not a problem because you can track them with GTM. But what if your website uses a different player (like Vimeo or a generic HTML5 player)? In today’s landscape of video players, the most popular embedded video player is Youtube (I have no stats to support this just saying this based on what I’ve seen on other websites). You should also consider other interactions, such as clicks, views of particular elements, video interactions, etc. Tracking pageviews is far from enough to understand what website visitors are doing on your site.
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