Google Tag Manager recently released the YouTube Video trigger, which gives us native support for YouTube video tracking more easily. The most basic thing we can track is the user interaction towards a video on site (played, the percentage of video watched etc). Beside basic tracking, we can use it to perform certain actions based on the events on the videos.

I have managed to create some of the use cases which we can use on the different types of websites like an eCommerce website OR a content website.

Case 1: Taking user feedback during playing video on site and sending feedback to Google Analytics.

For a content website it is important that user must enjoy the content of your video. Here what we can do is add an interactive feedback system using Google Tag Manager that will be shown in between playing the video on the page.

We can set the trigger of the feedback section based on our requirement, for example we can show the feedback section on the page as soon as the user reached 50% of the entire video length.

On the built-in trigger configuration of YouTube in Google Tag Manager we have the option to select video progress either by percentage based or time-based.

We will be using percentage based rule.

On the demo link which you can visit below, the video I have added is just a test video as an example, considering it an interactive tutorial/review video. Play and watch the video, once it is reached at 50% you will notice a feedback section appears under the video. Whatever feedback option you select the data will be sent as an “event” in Google Analytics.

Please visit this demo URL to view the system in action https://goo.gl/Vrx5u3

In Google Analytics events for this feedback we can send the name of the video that we can fetch using the built-in Youtube variable Video Title. This can help us to identify feedback of individual videos.

This is how events stats looks like inside Google Analytics report.

This entire feedback section is deployed in Google Tag Manager, and is based on HTML/ CSS/ jQuery. Sending feedback data on Google Analytics help us in getting the stats almost in real time without using any database or any other 3rd party application.

Case 2: Giving Add to Cart option of the products shown in video.

eCommerce websites contains tips or blog section to show tutorial or guide videos of the products which are listed on their website to engage with customers and show them how to use it, like eCommerce websites of beauty products demonstrate how to use their makeup products.

We can take advantage of those pages to show users the option to add the product(s) to cart while they are watching / OR have completed watching the video.

In this example demonstration, I will be showing a sticky bar on the bottom of the page with a link that will take user directly to the product page. (On real website we can have a direct ATC button as well).

Visit this demo link to see second case live in action https://goo.gl/3fnxdW

Case 3: Giving “Promo code” , “Opt-in” or ” Offer” notification at the end of video

Another use-case could be to show the users with a notification popup on entire page with promo code, or an email opt-in form or any special offer. This way you can encourage users to watch the video till the end in order to avail special offer.

Visit this demo link to see third case live in action https://goo.gl/EusqzU

Case 4: Retarget people who’ve watched videos

This could be a good use case, suppose we need to create audience list on Facebook for the people who watched videos on tips/blog pages on the site so that we can retarget them. We can create audience list for the people who watched the videos completely or just played the video and have watched up to the certain percentage.

We can create custom Facebook event pixel by the name “Video” or name that’s meaningful to you, we can also send video name in the event parameter.

Summary

These are some of the use case ideas, we can have much more. All of these solutions are deployed using Google Tag Manager.