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Hi Support,
I have a couple of questions regarding tracking on GA. I’ve gone through your Analytics Guide and it’s still difficult to comprehend. I uploaded screenshots to go along with the questions.
On the first screenshot (Website video views) I attached, it shows Top Events for the whole site. Does it mean we’ve had an overall of 3,805 video views since May 1st?
On the second screenshot (GA 1). What does ‘Video/ seconds played’ mean? In the guide you mentioned it being the average number of seconds people are watching. Does it mean an individual viewer has watched an average of 2,387 seconds of content within that time period? Can you also define what ‘Unique Events, and Event Value mean?
On screenshot (GA 2) what does ‘Flowplayer heartbeat’ mean?
On screenshot (GA 3) under the tab ‘Event Label’ does it mean the number 1 title is the most viewed with 1,996 views?
On screenshot (GA 4) I clicked on the video name. In the new window, the only available event shown is the ‘Video/ seconds played’. The video quartile events are not shown. It states the ‘Video/ seconds played’ is 253 seconds but that title is only two minutes long so how is the average seconds played longer than the actual video itself? You’ll notice I added the advanced filter to filter out the VAST events.
What is interesting is that on screenshot (GA 5) it records all quartiles on the video hosted on YouTube that is embedded on our site.
Might the reason of the video quartiles not showing be related to our videos being in HLS format?
Would love to get your assistance on this matter as tracking views is imperative for a streaming platform as you know.
Cheers,
MM
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Hello Support, still waiting to hear from you on this matter. Looking forward to your feedback.
Cheers,
MM
Hi mapongamike!
1. Top events. It means that you had 14,569 views (11,884 unique views.) Out of that 3,805 viewers just started the video (26.12%). On the timelime in the picture you can point to gives days and see views in a chosen day.
2. Video/ seconds played – viewer has watched an average of 2,387 seconds of content within that time period. You are right here. Unique events means all new visitors playing your video for the first time. As for example compared to a viewer watching one video multiple times (that would be counted in total events). Event value is in this case is total amount of seconds video was watched. Average value – average amount of seconds video was watched.
3. Flowplayer heartbeat is simply player sending a report to Google so that tracking doesn’t timeout and has nothing to do with webcast numbers.
4. Yes it means that number 1 title is the most viewed with 1,996 views and 1,907 unique views.
That the quartile stat is not shown is more likely related to google providing more data on Youtube videos (as they are parent organisation). We’ll have a further look into that one.
Thanks,
Lucia
Hello MM,
regarding GA 4 – we checked the quartile tracking on https://foliovision.com/player/demos/hls-stream and https://foliovision.com/player/demos/encrypted-hls-stream and found no issues.
However your screenshot shows some Event Label which ends in “Teaser” – please check the global list of events to see if you are getting any quartiles tracked for HLS streams. Perhaps they appear under a different name somehow?
Thanks,
Martin
Hi Lucia and Martin,
Thanks for the response explanation!
1. With the total 14569 views, does it represent people that actually watched some part of the video and not visiting the page? Meaning they either watched from Video Start, Second Quartile, or Third Quartile.
The 3,805 represents the people that clicked the play button to start video right? If there’s 14569 total views wouldnt the ‘Video Start’ indicate 14,569 instead of 3,805?
Is Video Start a more accurate number of people that actually watched?Lastly I’m able to see global stats on the quartiles but the problem is that I’m unable to see quartiles on individual video titles.
Lucia or Martin, may I provide you with my GA login details so you can see first hand?
Thanks for the help guys!
Hello MM,
I checked with Lucia and there was a mistake – the total number of video plays was 3,805, out of which 2,084 playback sessions lasted until the first quartile, then out of that 1,736 lasted until second quartile and so on – 1,196 playback sessions lasted until the video end (“Video complete”). Please note that if the user skips large parts of the video, then it’s no longer counting the video as “Video complete” and will also skip the individual quartiles.
I double checked our https://foliovision.com/player/demos/encrypted-hls-stream video quartiles in Google Analytics and it appears properly. Please check Google Analytics -> Behavior -> Events -> Pages.
There you have to enter the last part of the page URL to the search field (so for https://foliovision.com/player/demos/encrypted-hls-stream it’s just encrypted-hls-stream) and you will see how many events were tracked for that particular page. Then you can also click into that page and you will see the individual events – it should all be there.
Then you need to click for “Event Label” to see what labels are used for your videos. I expect there will be a mismatch there. The videos on https://foliovision.com/player/demos/encrypted-hls-stream are tracked as 20_gothic_avenue_live/index and svan_lake_reloaded_encrypted_7/index.
Thanks,
Martin
