Video Tracking with Omniture SiteCatalyst

As online video rapidly moves from internet novelty to business requirement for many web publishers, we have started to see greater and greater call for measurement. Call it what you will: engagement, virality, ROI, something entirely different--but web publishers are increasingly needing to see the results of their video efforts against whichever metrics are important for them.

Within the Brightcove Alliance, there are a number of partners who provide plug-ins to enable deep analytics of Brightcove video, including Visible Measures, TubeMogul, GlanceGuide, and Nedstat. Recently, web analytics giant, Omniture, released an updated plug-in as well. Now web publishers who use both Brightcove and Omniture Site Catalyst can look at video metrics side-by-side with the rest of their web analytics. And the implementation couldn't be simpler.

Omniture has a complete set of implementation instructions, available from within SiteCatalyst:

  • Log into SiteCatalyst
  • Click the "Help" link on the right side of the title bar
  • Select "Supporting Docs>Manuals" from the left side navigation
  • The documentation is called "Media_Tracking_Guide"

Within the Media Tracking Guide you will find detailed instructions on setting up the SiteCatalyst Analytics SWF within Brightcove. Here is a quick overview of the process, but be sure to read the documentation:

  1. Download the Analytics SWF from Omniture and host it on your server.
  2. Create the configuration XML file and host it on your server.
    This configuration file contains required runtime variables, such as your Omniture ID.
    The Media Tracking Guide has an example and defines all the parametes available.
  3. Within the Brightcove Publishing Module, enter the URL to the Analytics SWF you downloaded into the "Analytics SWF" field of each player you wish to track. The URL to the configuration file will be added as a query parameter. 

That's it! Within a few minutes you'll be able to add video analytics to your arsenal of web metrics that help you run your business.

Work with other analytics providers? Find certain metrics particularly useful? Have another thought about measurement? Tell us -- we'd love to hear!