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GAPro plugin and bridge tracking mode

3 replies [Last post]
Posted: Tue, 2010-03-09 17:42 Michael Whitaker
Anonymous's picture

First of all, thank you ...First of all, thank you very much for providing the bridge tracking option. I am not sure if it works properly though.

The instructions say that "You must have the Google Analytics tracking code and a tracking object on the page already in order to use bridge mode." This makes sense, but in the Bridge mode code example, you still require the UA code to be specified, e.g.

so.addVariable('gapro.accountid', 'UA-XXXXXXX-X');

Why do you need this if the tracker is already on the page?

Also, when I do set the UA code it looks like the tracking code from GA is loaded twice, once for the player and once from the page itself, which should not be the case I think.

I was expecting the bridge mode to literally only make an event tracking call such as:

pageTracker._trackEvent('Videos', 'Play', 'Gone With the Wind');

and nothing else. If you can point me in the right direction I'd very much appreciate it.

Michael

Posted: Thu, 2010-03-18 16:25 zach at longtail  
zach at longtail's picture

Hi Michael

The account id is something we checked for when in AS3 mode. We may update GAPro in a later release such that in bridge mode, it's not required.

As for loading the tracking code multiple times, I haven't observed that behavior. Can you post a link to a page that demonstrates this?

Finally, we're using the GAforFlash library to enable bridge mode. While I'm not familiar with the implementation details, it seems reasonable that it's probably calling pageTracker in the way you've described.

Best,

Zach

Posted: Mon, 2010-03-22 13:38 Michael Whitaker  
Michael Whitaker's picture

Hi Zach,

Here is a page that demonstrates the issue as I see it http://www.monitus.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=224 - click the View Video to launch. This page already has the GA tracker on the page and you can see the video parameters in the source where I set the Bridge mode. When I look at Firebug I see the original call to GA and then the events when you use the player controls.

Here is what I see in Firebug http://www.monitus.net/images/stories/longtailvideo.png

What concerns me are the differences in the GA parameters. The version of the tracker on the page is 4.6.5 whereas the one in the player is 4.3. This indicates to me that you are loading an older version of the tracking code inside the Flash player. Also, the other parameters are different - see the referral data for example.

This really looks like GA is seeing 2 different visitors.

Hope this helps. If you spot something wrong on my end I am all ears!

Many thanks,
Michael

Posted: Tue, 2010-03-23 11:21 zach at longtail  
zach at longtail's picture

Hi Michael,

I see 3 calls to gapro.

1.) The call to load ga.js
2.) The page tracking call, initiated from the JavaScript tracker version 4.6.5.
3.) The event tracking call, initiated from the ActionScript tracker version 4.3.

As I said before, the plugin isn't loading anything. It uses GAforFlash, which seems to be based on version 4.3 of the GA library.

The referrer in the request header looks the same to me. The primary difference between the requests is the addition / removal of various parameters, but that's primarily because one request is a page view track versus and event track.

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