In this article, we will introduce the “Google Analytics Event Tracking” feature, which was released as a new feature of the Brightcove Players module in July 2019.
As we have [introduced](https://www.brightcove.com/ja/resources/blog/brightcove-video-cloud%E3%81%A8google-analytics%E3%81%AE%E9%80%A3%E6%90%BA/ As mentioned in the “Introduction”), Brightcove has previously been able to send event data to Google Analytics (hereinafter referred to as GA) by using a<a href=“https://github.com/BrightcoveOS/videojs-ga-videocloud” target=“_blank” title=“Plug In”>Plug In</a>. While this allows for detailed settings, it is not something that can be easily set up by anyone.
This release is a new feature with different specifications to the above, and is a long-awaited feature that allows anyone to set it up on the Players module (GUI). Let’s quickly check the settings and specifications.
## Brightcove Settings
First, please go to the Players module on Brightcove and select and click on the player that you want to send events to Google Analytics. When you click and move to the left, the “Third-party analytics” tab is displayed, so please click on “Google Analytics”.
After that, when you check the “Enable Google Analytics” checkbox, “Sign in to Google Account” will be displayed, so please click on that.
When you click on it, the Google account selection screen will be displayed, so please select the account that is using GA and click on “Allow” after moving to the next page.
Then, a screen for selecting an account will be displayed, so please select the GA account to which you want to send event data. If the following screen is displayed after selecting, the settings are complete.
Please note that using this function will automatically create up to seven custom dimensions on GA.
The number of custom dimensions (dimensions) above will vary depending on your environment.
After you click ‘Save’, don’t forget to click ‘Publish and Embed’ => ‘Publish Changes’ in the top right corner.
## Google Analytics Operation Check
Next, let’s check how event data is sent from the Brightcove player in Google Analytics.
If you publish and play a video using a player with the above settings completed, the event data will be stored in “Behavior” > “Events” in Google Analytics. It takes some time for the event data to be reflected in Google Analytics, so you can also check that the event data is stored in “Real-time” > “Events”.
If you can see the item “Video” in the “Event Category” as shown above, the integration has been successful. Also, if you can see “Video” in the “Event Category”, “Event Action” and “Event Label” as shown below in “Behavior” > “Event”, the integration has been successful.
## Event Overview
In the Players module, you can select events for various items. This time, we will introduce the overview of basic events and custom dimensions.
### Basic Events
– __Video Impression:__ Fires when a video is loaded into the player and ready to play.
– __Play Request:__ Fires when the play button is pressed or when the video plays automatically. If the video is paused and then played again, it will be counted as a new impression.
– __Video Engagement:__ Fires depending on the selection of the following custom dimensions.
### Custom Dimensions
– __Video Seconds Viewed:__ Measures how many seconds of the video have been viewed. When this item is enabled, a Video Engagement event is fired at approximately 10-second intervals. It is also fired when the video is paused or playback is ended.
If the video is still playing, event data is stored in GA at intervals of about 10 seconds. In the example above, 10 is displayed in Video Seconds Viewed, so we can see that there were 27 events.
The reason why a value other than 10 is displayed in Video Seconds Viewed is that events are also fired when the video is paused or playback is ended.
– __Range:__ Measures the playback position (in seconds) at the time of the event. For example, if it is displayed on the 8..17 Range, it means that it was displayed from 8 seconds to 17 seconds.
– __Video Duration:__ This refers to the length of the video.
– __Player ID and Player Name:__ This refers to the ID and name of the player in which the video was played.
– __Account Name:__ This refers to the Brightcove account ID.
– __Session:__ This refers to the session ID assigned when the player is loaded.
– __Player Version:__ This refers to the version of the player in which the video was played.
## Finally
I hope you now understand that you can use the event tracking function of GA with very simple settings. However, you will need to think about how to use and analyze the event data mentioned above. In the next post, Mr. Nakamura, a lecturer at <a href=“http://dmu.co.jp/” target=“_blank” title=“DMU”>DMU</a>, a school that trains digital marketing personnel, will teach you how to analyze the data.
