Question

I was trying to figure out the simplest way to check how many users watch an embedded youtube video. Would the following work fine?

$('.video').click(function(){
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview', 'Video Views', 'Play', 'The Perfect Belgian Serve']);

    });

.video is a class given to the iframe tag.

Just found this plug-in:

<div class="ytvid">ylLzyHk54Z0</div>
<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.7.2.js"></script>
<script src="jquery.ytiframetracker.js"></script>
<script>
  jQuery(function ($) {
    $.ytiframetracker({
      track: function (action, label, value) { // track callback
        console.log('custom tracking', action, label, value);
      }
    });
  });
</script>

https://code.google.com/p/jquery-ytiframetracker/wiki/Examples

Could somebody explain what action, label and value are there for?

Answer 1

Instead of relying on Google Analytics and custom events/tracking, you could use the YouTube Analytics API: http://developers.google.com/youtube/analytics

That assumes that the video in question belongs to your own account, though, since you can’t use YouTube Analytics for videos in arbitrary accounts.