I'm looking to track custom timings of Brightcove videos with Google Tag Manager. I have a tag set up that tracks Brightcove's default data layer values, which include Media Play/Pause, Media Begin, and % Milestone Passed. However, I'm not sure if there's a way to track custom timings beyond this standard set that Brightcove tracks? I haven't found documentation outlining how to do this.
I followed the process in this article to set up tracking: https://iabramo.com/2016/03/08/track-brightcove-player-with-google-tag-manager/
If anyone has advice on how to track custom timings (ie. at 1 minute, 53 seconds), please let me know. Thanks in advance!
Elizabeth,
We recently released a Google Tag Manager Plugin for use with the Brightcove Player. Using that, you can configure custom dimensions in addition to the standard ones track by GA.
In the docs, there is a reference to a dimension called bcvideo_video_milestone which might be able to be set to 1 min 53 seconds if that is the milestone you want to trigger an event for.
https://support.brightcove.com/google-tag-manager-plugin-brightcove-player
Related
Question about migrating manually inserted Meta pixels/Events to GTM. Any feedback is much appreciated!
We manually installed the FB Pixel and manually created events b installing the code into our website a few months ago.
Now, we want to migrate all of these events, including the pixel loading code to GTM.
My question: If I delete the existing pixels loading/event creation code on the website and create the appropriate tags/trigger in GTM:
a) will those 'new GTM' events be pushed as new events to Meta
b) will the pixel have to re-learn?
c) will I lose the data flowing into my existing ads?
For example, if I delete the following code from the website and create the appropriate tag in GTM how will these events change?
<script>
fbq('track', 'Lead');
</script>
a) No, there is no magic whatsoever. Inspect how the network requests to Meta look right now, then reimplement them in GTM and in GTM preview on your lower env make sure the GTM-spawned network requests are exactly like they are on prod. As long as the requests are the same, the endpoint won't know the difference.
b) No, it won't know anything has changed. Exceeept... Note that some adblockers may block GTM, but allow facebook, so the volume of conversions may be slightly lower, but that shouldn't affect FB's learning.
c) You may lose some data, but not much since most of the adblockers block both, facebook and GTM. The data loss is likely to be low enough to be immeasurable and insignificant.
But again, during the development, test your network requests if you don't want surprises. The data should not change unless you make mistakes.
I will start with describing what I am trying to achieve, in order to avoid x-y problem. And if the solution I try to apply is not the best one, please, tell me a different one.
I have a website. There is an audio player on it. I would like to track in my GA how many users started the audio, how many users listened 25% of it, how many users listened 50% of it and so on. I can access the needed information (e.g. user reached 25%, so it is time to tell about this to GA through GTM) in client-side JavaScript, the question is only about setting up the GTM and GA correctly.
So, now that I described my intentions, let me show what I was able to do so far.
1 I created a custom metric with Hit scope in GA.
2 I created a tag which increments the metric created in the 1.
3 I created a custom event in GTM. When user starts playing the audio I fire the event with the help of dataLayer. And the event fires the tag which I created in 2.
4 I created a custom dashboard in GA to track how many users started the sound.
And now I am stuck. I get the needed data from my website to GTM. I trigger the tag which should send the data over to GA. I have the needed metric and dashboard set up in GA. And now I would expect the widget in my custom dashboard in GA to show that the audio was started, but it does not happen.
I am very new to GA and GTM and may not understand some concepts, as a result I may miss some necessary for troubleshooting information. I will gladly provide it if you need it.
Thank you (y).
We are having an issue with our tracking on www.x3tradesmen.com where a Google Tag Manager tag is firing way too many times and we cannot determine why...
We only have one website event tag linked to Google Analytics called Form Submit and typically we would receive between 2-10 Form Submit events per day at the most, however, recently we have noticed that the tag is firing 1000's of times sporadically and we cannot pinpoint the issue. We have also noticed that our users have drastically increased for short time periods (minutes/hours). We typically only get 40-80 users per day on our website but we saw a massive spike of around 400 users in less than one hour once.
We recently added the facebook pixel via GTM and that is really the only change that we have made and now we are seeing these issues. Does anyone know of any common reasons to why this would be behaving this way or can anyone see any major issues with our implementation of GA or GTM on our website that would cause this?
I know this information is vague, so please let me know if there is specific information that would help identify the issue.
Thanks in advance!
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I presume it is the FB pixel - Facebook automatically collects information in addition to what you have configured yourself and uses post/submit events to send them. You can disable that behaviour as per documentation and see if it makes a difference:
Automatic Configuration
The Facebook pixel will send button click and
page metadata (such as data structured according to Opengraph or
Schema.org formats) from your website to improve your ads delivery and
measurement and automate your pixel setup. To configure the Facebook
Pixel to not send this additional information, in the Facebook Pixel
Base code, add fbq('set', 'autoConfig', 'false', '')
above the init call.
I had a similar issue where suddenly additional submit events turned up in the GTM preview pane that I finally tracked down to FB, so there is a good chance that yours is the same problem.
I am really new to Google Analytics and I had a requirement of tracking clicks and impressions. I followed following link
http://www.statstory.com/tracking-clicks-and-impressions-in-google-analytics/
and sucessfully implemented the same.
Now my requirement is to get the no.of clicks and no. of impressions
to my html page. I am googled for past quite hours but couldnot find
any luck with the same.
Any help would be highly appreciated.
You should really consider implementing Google Analytics Enhanced E-commerce functionality.
Google Analytics Enhanced E-commerce
In regards to answering your question of the API, you should query it asking for events. Namely category, action and label events and apply a filter to only return the data you wish to receive, such as 'Impressions' as a filter for 'Event Action'. That will return all impressions and if you instead change the filter to use 'Click', you'd get all clicks instead.
If you followed the above guide and made it into Universal, then you'd see the calls you set and it is set up in the following way:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Banner', 'Click', 'BANNERNAME',1.00,true]);
This bit of code pushes (legacy version) Analytics data in the form of:
_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Category', 'Action', 'Label',1.00,true]);
So, changing the different sections means you change how you define the data and how it will be visible in reports. Category defines the Event Category, Action defines the Event Action and Label defines the Event Label.
Take a look at the core development guide. Also, here you can see all the API calls available: Dimension & Metrics explorer for Google Analytics
I gather that you want to track impressions for banner advertising that is displayed by yourself (i.e. not through an adserver) in your website.
I agree with Mr Sponge that you should upgrade to Universal Analytics. if you want to implement enhanced e-commerce tracking (EEC) you probably want to read about Measuring internal Promotions, which is a feature specifically build for that kind of reporting.
If you just need the raw number of banner impressions and/or need a solution that's easier to implement (but less capable) you can increment a custom metric every time you banner shows up (this is basically a counter, you might want to use it together with a custom dimension that holds the banner name). Click tracking would still be done by events (with similar custom metrics and dimensions). From that data you can assemble a custom report and use a calculated metric for click through rates etc.
Not as good as EEC by a fair margin but much easier to do.
I have several Custom Dimensions setup in both admin and in the code on my site.
I have verified that the data is being sent correctly to Google Analytics (I used the Chrome GA debugger), but can't seem to find any reports that show these new dimensions.
Since their changing things all the time, it's probably hidden somewhere, but I've gone through every standard report and haven't seen anything.
So, where do you go to view this information?
Found it! Well sort of. Right now, Google doesn't have a standard report that includes Custom Dimenstions. You have to go in Customization to build a custom report and include any of the custom metrics or dimensions you've created.
If you're new to GA, custom reports can probably be a little confusing so wrote up a quick blog post that walks through setting up, implementing and building reports with custom dimensions: http://benmarshall.me/ga-custom-dimensions/