Using link click counter to count YouTube Onebox play?

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Using link click counter to count YouTube Onebox play

The discussion revolves around the idea of counting the number of times a YouTube onebox embed is clicked on (“played”) in Discourse. DeanMarkTaylor proposes this feature, suggesting that both clicks on the play button and the title link should be counted. A simple mockup is provided to illustrate the concept.

DeanMarkTaylor believes this feature would be a good indicator of engagement, despite not being an exact count of plays. codinghorror asks techapj to look into the feasibility of implementing this feature, noting that the Onebox being an external gem might complicate matters.

(ccdw)(/t/-/29944/4) shares a related video on tracking embedded YouTube videos with Google Tag Manager, which allows for monitoring events such as play, pause, and video completion.

However, sam points out that implementing this feature is complicated and might not be worth it since most people play videos inline. WaitroseCarpark expresses support for the feature, highlighting its usefulness in indicating popular or unpopular content when users share links instead of properly embedding videos.

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It would be nice to see the number of times a YouTube onebox embed had been clicked on (“played”).

Considering that YouTube onebox embeds in Discourse are just simple links.

e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siMFORx8uO8

Which embeds as:

Note the title of the video is actually a link and if clicked goes to YouTube.
I believe both of the following should be counted:

  • Clicking the Play button in the centre
  • Clicking the Title link

A simple mock up would be:

Although this wouldn’t be the actual count of plays and people might replay etc. it would be a good indicator.

5 Likes
OpenROV and Discourse
2

Sure @techapj can you look into how difficult this would be? Not sure if Oneboxer being an external gem (I kind of regret this tbh) complicates matters.

1 Like
3

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With only 3 likes - it makes me think people are coming here for other reasons than this feature though.

I’m still very interested in this feature.

1 Like
4

I like your idea a lot.

Related: I looked at Google tag manager recently and saw the following;

Published on 8 Sep 2015In this weeks video we’ll look at how to track Embedded YouTube Videos with Google Tag Manager. We can do this by implementing a custom HTML tag which listens for the interactions on the video. This allows us to monitor events such as a user only watching 25% or 75% of the video, as well as how many times they hit play or pause. We can then visualise this data in Google Analytics. Please see our first link if you want the written tutorial used in the video, enjoy!

1 Like
5

This is fairly complicated and quite minor since majority of people just play inline. count of plays would be way more interesting but that is even more complicated.

4 Likes
6

Just replying to +1 on this feature.

When people have messed up their embed and leave a link for video sometimes the numbers vary wildly and it’s a really good indication to my users of popular/unpopular content which is lost if you can only see the preview.

1 Like