We tend to do a fair bit of analytics integrations for our clients, mainly in Google Analytics and Omniture. Both provide great features for tracking standard web site usage metrics, including page views, visits, entry/exit points, and more. Until recently, Omniture has had a leg up in one particular area of the analytics space, namely video metrics.

It is beyond value what a content publisher, advertiser, syndicator or whoever else you can think of can glean from metrics that track the behavior of viewers of video content. Here are some key items that can be “gleaned”:

• Popularity of certain videos
• Which kinds of video content retains users (e.g., short form vs. long form, ad-supported vs. free, etc)
• Abandonment of playback (e.g., when does a user call it quits on a clip)
• How is the content shared? Does a user send it to a friend, to Facebook, to a blog?

This kind of data can clearly help a variety of video content providers and advertisers target content better to their users and produce better content overall. In this space, Omniture has been leading the charge for a while now with their SiteCatalyst product suite, which includes specific video metrics. The product suite includes an API which can integrate directly into a Flash-based video player, with particularly close integration with Brightcove’s video players, and provides hooks to track the various user behaviors that can occur during video playback.

Google does not want to be left behind in this space, given that they wish to “organize the world’s information”, and have recently opened up a relatively new component of their Google Analytics to all users of that service. The Event Tracking API has now been added to all Google Analytics accounts, whereas previously it was an invite-only beta feature. This portion of their analytics API allows you to track almost arbitrary event-oriented data, without affecting the more conventional web site-oriented metrics, such as pageviews. Event Tracking really enables users of Google Analytics to leverage the platform for video tracking, allow you to define and measure user events that are important to your video content and players. Here are some examples:

• Start playback of video
• Pauses and resumes
• Skipping backwards or forwards in a clip
• Turning the volume up or down
• How far the user got before stopping or moving to another clip

But the richness this kind of event tracking doesn’t stop there. With the proliferation of RIA applications on the web, you now have the opportunity to track user behavior, beyond video playback, at a greater level of detail.

• Track search terms within Flash or Flex-based applications
• Follow navigation paths through RIA applications without incurring page views in your metrics
• Track viral features in a video player or other RIA application: blog posts & social link sharing (Delicious, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon)
• The list goes on…

Check out a great primer on using the API at the link below.

http://www.insideria.com/2009/02/using-google-analytics-within.html