analytics.js YouTube Plugin

With the analytics.js YouTube Plugin you can collect YouTube player events into the Segment ecosystem.

Prerequisites

The Segment YouTube Plugin requires the YouTube player JavaScript object as an input, so your YouTube player embed must use the YouTube IFrame player API.

To begin, generate an API Key for the Segment YouTube plugin, which it uses to access metadata about the playing video content. To do this, create a new project in the Google Developer Console, then create a new API Key in that project for the Segment YouTube plugin. You can read more about this process in the YouTube documentation on registering an application.

Getting Started

After you’ve generated the API key:

1. Enable a new plugin.
   • Navigate to Connections > Sources and choose the source you want to connect the YouTube plugin to. Go to the Settings tab of your source and select Plugins. You can enable the YouTube plugin from this menu:

   

   Note: Only Javascript sources support plugins.

2. Initialize the plugin by giving it access to the YouTube video player instance(s) running on your page.
   • Use the initialize method in the YouTube onYouTubeIframeAPIReady() function to register and initialize the plugin with the player instance and your API key:

var player;
      function onYouTubeIframeAPIReady() {
              player = new YT.Player('player', {
              height: '390',
              width: '640',
              videoId: 'M7lc1UVf-VE'
        });
	      analytics.ready(function () {
    var ytAnalytics = new window.analytics.plugins.YouTubeAnalytics(player, 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX0365')
   ytAnalytics.initialize()
      })}

That’s it! The plugin listens to the YouTube player for events, and fires the corresponding Segment Video Spec events on analytics.js.

Supported Events

The plugin tracks the following Segment Video Spec events:

Supported Properties

The plugin automatically attaches the following Segment Video Spec to the above events:

‘Playback’ Events

• Total Length
• Position
• Quality
• Video Player
• Sound

‘Content’ Events

• Title
• Description
• Keywords
• Channel
• Airdate
• Duration