YouTube Insight: Embedded Player Discovery
Aug 19, 2009 by Jake Matthews | Analytics, Social Networks, VideoVideo continues to be a powerful medium to work with online. YouTube recently eclipsed Yahoo as the 2nd largest search engine. Participating in video for the purpose of promoting your business is becoming more important each day. Whether it’s increasing brand exposure or simply getting across a “how-to” to your customer base, video communicates your message in a unique and lasting way.
In a post about video optimization and analytics last year, we discussed ways to gain more exposure for your videos and find ways to measure the successes of your efforts with YouTube Insight. Here we’d like to dig a big deeper to show that within YouTube Insight you can find where your videos are embedded on other websites, and it’s these websites that present further opportunity for marketing your business and content.
Knowing where your videos have been embedded provides the opportunity to find new, targeted communities and then possibly join or work in those communities where people have adopted your content. This is basically following the lead of your fans, a true “go with the flow” organic approach.
How do we do find where our videos are embedded?
In YouTube Insight go to > Discovery > Source of Views > Embedded Player
….and then you’ll be able to view the sites where your video has been embedded.
Oftentimes there will be video sharing websites that have picked up your content, but from time to time you find niche sites and communities that have picked up your video content as well. Click on those links and you’ll find pretty targeted sites/communities where your content may resonate well in the future and where it may be worth joining to discuss content and share yours in the future.
It’s important to note that sometimes YouTube Insight shows websites where your video may not necessarily be embedded, but where your video received exposure through the “related videos” feature of another embedded video. Additionally, Insight does not show the actual URL where your video may have been embedded; it only shows the domain name. Nonetheless, the Embedded Player feature in Insight will provide you with leads on targeted websites.
With the above example of a video about a BMW car, we were able to discover the following new websites:
- E90post.com,
- bmwfans.net,
- bmwtuner.net,
- e30club.ru
These are very targeted websites covering the area of BMW cars and for BMW enthusiasts to gather. Prior to working with YouTube Insight, we did not know of these four targeted websites nor did we know that the users would potentially be interested in this video content. Now there is an opportunity to “follow the lead” of your content.
There is a lot you can do once you know the websites and communities where your content is shared and adopted. Here are a couple of proactive examples:
- Find the page where your video is embedded and promote and tag that page in other social sites or link to it from a blog to increase exposure. Try using [site: domainname.com keyword] searches, which can help you locate your video since Insight only shows the domain and not the actual page where your video is.
- Join the new found website and be transparent about who you are (representing your brand) and become a contributing, helpful and friendly community member so that more users within that community will begin to look back at your site or YouTube account for more video embed opportunities.
- Reach out to the user who posted the original embed and offer them an opportunity at exclusive video looks in the future, where they may access your content before others to share first. By befriending and empowering this user, you can begin to build real advocates for your video content.
There are many great software packages and websites to track your social and video campaigns and where your video has been picked up and embedded. However, if you are running a small, targeted video campaign and you’re focused solely on YouTube as a channel, sometimes finding successes and other “rooms” to build awareness and impressions is as easy as digging through your YouTube Insights panel and checking out the “Embedded Player” feature in Discovery. It can lead to a lot of great relationships and more exposure for your content.
Here’s a brief video recap of what’s discussed above 
13 Responses to “YouTube Insight: Embedded Player Discovery”
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Jake, thanks alot for the information…it is amazing to me that in all the info on the web no one else seems to have info on how to interpret UTube insight…I think you are the first that I have seen…so much of that stuff on Innsight I don't understand…like "utube other",,,,
btw, I am an American who teaches tango thru ZEN in Rome, Italy….come visit me sometime. I will be glad to host you. here is my latets video…what do you think http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-5X1VPtwec
Oscar, thanks for stopping by and taking time to comment on my post. With Insight, YouTube seems to be scratching the surface of video analytics, so it's good to spend some time getting to know it as it develops.
Your videos are really great. They capture a lifestyle and that seems to be the perfect pitch fur your biz and work. Fantastic!. I like this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhVS397Z4r8
Feel free to reach out to me through our contact page if you need further feedback. While I'm not a video director I always love chat about how best to leverage it online.
[...] source 10e20 [...]
Thanks Jake for taking the time to respond to my comment…the link to the video you sent me was "malformed"…or some problem like that…can you resend it…
Also, I have a question is there a site which totally explains how to interpret the utube insights…thanks
[...] source 10e20 [...]
Hi Oscar, the link is fixed
The video was "Santa Maria Libera's Lunch."
Following YouTube's blog can be helpful, but the best way to learn is by doing! (as you well know)
Oscar, thanks for stopping by and taking time to comment on my post. With Insight, YouTube seems to be scratching the surface of video analytics, so it's good to spend some time getting to know it as it develops.
Your videos are really great. They capture a lifestyle and that seems to be the perfect pitch fur your biz and work. Fantastic! I like this onehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhVS397Z4r8/a%3E&q... target="_blank"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhVS397Z4r8″ target=”_blank”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhVS397Z4r8
Feel free to reach out to me through our contact page if you need further feedback. While I'm not a video director I always love chat about how best to leverage it online.
Thanks for the invite to Rome, I'd love to stop by!
[...] source 10e20 [...]
Thanks for the article. So informative. And the illustrations above are easy to understand. Video is a powerful tool on marketing. Thanks for sharing about the youtube insight.
Ironically, just today I thought to click thru on one of my video's Insight categories to see a list of where it had been embedded.
Unfortunately, as you noted, Youtube only dispplays the root website domain… NOT the specific page it was embedded on.
Remind me again… Youtube *is* owned by Google, right? Could they not go that one baby step further and show the actual page it's either embedded or linked on?! That would give the video's creator a chance to engage that audience and perhaps generate even more click thrus to Youtube.
So – love the fact they include this info. But not indicating the actual page is a huge FAIL in my opinion.
Its a good move for youtube. this will help boosting youtube market share and page view constantly and the 1st online vdo web title is not going anywhere.
I never knew you could access info on where your videos are, and never once heard anybody discuss this. Everybody is so focused on how to get your video submitted to all the video sites. That's really great info.
I've started a youtube video site myself that basically has a huge amount of videos from popular categories.
I'm starting to get some decent ttraffic via this site. I would like to know if there is an html snippet/code that prevents users from clicking on the video and advancing onto youtube's actual website (without having to create my own flash player). my site is YouTube Videos if interested in helping me – thanks.