Getting Started with the Analytics Module

The Analytics module brings together information about your media and players. Regardless of your specific goals for online video, understanding your audience is a key to developing the most successful strategy. The clearer your picture of a typical viewer, the easier it is to create content that will engage them in formats they can easily consume. Using the Analytics module, you can generate up-to-date reports about how many viewers you have, how much viewers are watching your videos, when they stop watching them, and even where they are watching from.

A different set of data is presented in the Video Cloud Studio Reports page. Read more.

This topic includes the following sections that describe how to use the Analytics module:

• Launching the Analytics module
  
• Available reports
• Selecting player reports or video reports
• Selecting a time span
• Selecting multiple players or multiple videos for comparison
• Exporting data from the Analytics module
• Analytics and tracking cookies
• Limitations

Launching the Analytics module

To launch the Analytics module:

1. Log into the Video Cloud Studio at https://my.brightcove.com.
2. Open the Analytics module by clicking the Analytics icon in the navigation header:

Available reports

In this release of Video Cloud, you can view and export the following reports in the Analytics module:

All reports in the Analytics module are available in the aggregate and per player; some are also available per video, as indicated below. Per player and per video reports are available only for Video Cloud Pro and Enterprise publishers.

Report Title	Per Player	Per Video
Engagement
Video views	x	x
Viewed minutes	x	x
Attention span	x
Video engagement	x
Audience
New viewers	x
Unique viewers	x
Geographic analytics	x
Technology
Platform trends	x
OS trends	x
Browser trends	x
Traffic sources
Embedded domains	x	x
Referring sites	x	x
Search terms	x	x

Read the Analytics Report Reference for detailed information about each of these reports.

Selecting player reports or video reports

All reports in the Analytics module are available in the aggregate and per player; some are also available per video. Per player and per video reports are available only for Video Cloud Pro and Enterprise publishers. Select which kind of report you want in the upper left of the Analytics module:

Selecting per player or per video

When you select Players or Videos, the navigation pane on the left displays which reports are available for that report type. Click the name of a report to open the report.

Note: All analytics data remains available for deleted videos and deleted players; however, you will not be able to select deleted videos or deleted players when comparing multiple videos or players.

Selecting a time span

For each report in the Analytics module, you can specify the time period that you want the data to cover. You can select one of:

• Today
• Last 7 days
• Last 30 days
• This month. The calendar month to date; for example, if today is March 17, this report will display March 1 - March 17.
• Previous month. The previous calendar month; for example, if today is February 14, this report will display January 1 - January 31.
• Custom. You can select a custom date range, with the start and end dates you choose. Note that no data will exist before the later of the date you deployed your first Video Cloud player or November 7, 2009, when we deployed the data trackers for this feature.

Selecting a time span

In each case, the report will include data up until approximately 2 to 4 hours before the report is generated.

Selecting multiple players or multiple videos for comparison

In many reports, you can select up to 4 players and display their data as separate lines on the graph. You can instead select 3 players and compare them to the overall data for all players in that report. This feature applies to the Video Views, Viewed Minutes, Unique Viewers, New Viewers, Geographic Analysis, OS Trends, and Browser Trends reports. This feature is available only for Video Cloud Pro and Enterprise publishers.

In video reports, you can also select up to 4 videos and display their data as separate lines on the graph, or select 3 videos and compare them to the overall data for all videos in that report. This feature applies to the Video Views and Viewed Minutes reports. This feature is available only for Video Cloud Pro and Enterprise publishers.

Selecting players for comparison

Each player is displayed as a separate line on the graph:

Comparing players in the Analytics module

Selecting data views

In some reports, there are multiple data views you can choose from. For example, in the Unique Viewers report, you can choose to display the number of unique viewers, views per unique viewer, or viewed minutes per unique viewer. Use the drop-down menu above the chart to select the data view you want:

Selecting a data view

Exporting data from the Analytics module

You can export reports from the Analytics module in CSV format, which you can then open and manipulate in a spreadsheet. You can also export reports as a chart image in PNG format. To use the export feature, you must have Flash Player 10 installed. Read about exporting data from the Analytics module.

Analytics and tracking cookies

The Video Cloud analytics features use browser cookies to track unique and new viewers. If a viewer does not permit cookies to be set, then unique and new viewers are determined based on IP address, which can be less precise.

Disabling tracking cookies

If your web site policies prohibit using cookies in this way, or if for whatever reason you do not want to use them, you can disable this analytics and reporting cookie feature. To disable analytics tracking:

1. Sign in to the Video Cloud Studio.
2. On the Video Cloud Studio Home page, click the Account Settings link at the top right, under the navigation bar. You must have Administrator privileges to access this area of the Studio.
3. On the Account Settings page, click Analytics.
4. Click the Tracking for Analytics Module - Edit link and select Disable.

No further analytics information will be gathered from your Video Cloud players.

Limitations

The Analytics module has the following limitations:

• If you set the default reports time zone in the Studio Account Settings > Analytics page, it affects only data presented in the Reports page, not data presented in the Analytics module. The time zone for the Analytics module is the time zone set for your account when your account is created.
• The Analytics module works only with ActionScript 3 players, created with Brightcove 3 or later. It does not work with ActionScript 2 players created in the Brightcove Console.
• Exporting data from the Analytics module requires that you have Flash Player 10 installed.