analytics.js YouTube Plugin

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

The Segment YouTube Plugin uses the following Google APIs:

• YouTube IFrame player API: Controls the video (play, pause, stop).
• Data API: Accesses metadata about the video in the iFrame.

Prerequisites

To begin, create a new project in the Google Developer Console, then create a new API key in that project. 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. This can be done by adding this script, to the section of the source code where the page loads.
   • 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()
      })}

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