Track Youtube Videos on Google Analytics 4 [2 Easy Ways]

Update time: January 15, 2025

In this section, I will share how to track YouTube video playback on the website.

• Enhanced Measurement Events: Enhanced Measurement has a built-in Video engagement that can track Youtube Video.
• Youtube Video Trigger: in fact, Google Tag Manager has a built-in Youtube Video Trigger, it is very easy to track using this trigger.

Suppose now to track the video on https://www.bbccss.com/youtube-test

Enhanced Measurement Events

GA4’s enhanced measurement events have built-in Video engagement, contains three events：

In GA4 , click 「Admin」——「Data Streams」, open Web stream details：

And then click the Settings icon for Enhanced measurement, you will see “Enhanced  measurement”:

Check 「Video engagement」 and click save, and you’re all set.

Read More : GA4 Event Tracking Series ② —— Enhanced Measurement Events

Youtube Video Trigger

Google Tag Manager has a built-in Youtube Video Trigger, it is very easy to track Youtube Video using this trigger.

Step 1 : Enable Built-In Variables

First enable some Built-In Variables, which will automatically get attributes to variables in GTM.

In GTM , click「Variables」——「Configure」，Check these Built-In Variables of click：

Click「Variable」——「Configure」 , check all the Video type variable:

Step 2 : Set Up the Trigger

In GTM , click「Triggers」——「New」——「Choose a trigger type to begin setup…」——「YouTube Video」，Name it “Youtube”, and make the following settings:

There are 4 types of Capture options:

• Start: Fires when the video starts playing
• Complete: Fires : when the video ends
• Pause, Seeking, and Buffering: If the video is paused, the scrub bar is moved, or if the video buffers, the trigger will fire.
• Progress: Fires at specified video progress points, configured by percentage or time threshold values:
  • Percentages: This value indicates the percentage of the video that has been played. Enter percentages as a comma separated list of one or more integers. Example: 5, 20, 50, 80, which represents 5%, 20%, 50%, and 80% respectively.
  • Time Thresholds: This value represents the number of seconds that the video has played. Enter time thresholds as a comma-delimited list of one or more integers. Example: 5, 15, 60, 120, which represents 5 seconds, 15 seconds, 60 seconds, and 120 seconds respectively.
• Advanced——Add JavaScript API support to all YouTube videos： Check this box to enable the YouTube iFrame Player API. If you are copying videos from Youtube, you don’t need to enable it. 
• Enable this trigger on: Select the appropriate option, For best results Window Load (gtm.load) is the recommended option.
  • Container Load (gtm.js) occurs as soon as possible when the page loads.
  • Window Load (gtm.load) (default) occurs after all initial content on the page has loaded.
  • DOM Ready (gtm.dom) occurs after DOM is ready to be parsed.

Step 3 : Set Up the Tags

In GTM , click「Tags」——「New」——「Choose a tags type to begin setup…」——「Google Analytics: GA4 Event」，Name it “GA4-Event-Youtube Video Tracking“, and make the following settings:

The event name here is video_{{Video Status}}, where {{Video Status}} is a built-in variable. For example, if the corresponding {{Video Status}} is start when playback starts, then the event name is video_start.

I have set an event parameter video_title here. You can set more. It is recommended to use the event parameter names already in Enhanced Measurement Events, such as video_current_time、video_duration、video_percent、video_provider、video_title、video_url、visible (boolean)

Step 4 : Preview and Publish

Next is the Preview test:

Tags is triggered and can be published.

Read More：

• Understand DebugView in Google Analytics 4
• New Preview Mode Google Tag Manager：Tag Assistant

Step 5 : Custom Definitions

The next step is to register event parameters video_title , if you want to use it in GA4, you need to register it in the Custom definitions of GA4.

In GA4，click「Admin」——「Custom definitions」——「Create custom dimension」, then do the following configuration:

Step 6 : Verify Data in Reports

Generally, after 24 hours, we can see the data in GA4, such as: