A client of mine has just launched a Youtube channel. The majority of their users are expected to watch via an on-site video embed since that's where all their marketing comms are sending them. The embedded iframe has the following code:
<iframe id="fv-111253" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-tbdf3_LHfA?modestbranding=1&showinfo=0&rel=0&iv_load_policy=3&origin=https%3A%2F%2Ferp.today&widget_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Ferp.today" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
A live example is here: https://erp.today/tv/
Despite 700 unique page views reported by Google Analytics, we don't seem to be seeing any views attributed to the embedded player in YouTube Analytics. External Traffic Sources list some social media sites, and Playback Location only shows "YouTube watch-page".
When watching the Realtime stats, sometimes we see a view pop in the chart after 1 to 5 minutes, that may correspond to one of us testing, but other times we don't, so we can't be sure it's not a coincidence. And still it's not attributed anywhere to the embedded player.
I've tried:
- Setting the origin & widget_referrer params (originally these were not in the iframe URL)
- Ensured there are full views from 18 different people via the embedded player (so it's not the >30s filter)
- It's not on autoplay
- Stopped using the
nocookiedomain in case that was it
The fact I cannot point to the analytics and say "look, here's the view counts from your site so they are working and your stats are low but must be correct" means I cannot confirm analytics are working correctly.
Does anyone know what I need to do, to make the website views show up in YT analytics, preferably as a separate "external source"?
