Understanding the level of engagement your viewers have with a video is crucial. For some videos, statistics like View Progress, Total Completion Rate, and Unique Completion Rate can provide valuable insights. However, these metrics might not be sufficient for various reasons. Here are a few examples:

  1. In data-driven videos with many alternate scenes and dynamic scene durations, the video duration can vary significantly for different viewers. This can skew the completion rates.
  2. For videos that encourage navigation through different sections, viewers might all watch the end of the video where the navigation menu is located. This skews the results, making the completion rate metrics less meaningful.

To create more meaningful metrics, you can establish a specific point or action in the video that is then registered in analytics. To do this, use the Report a Checkpoint option in the Action drop-down menu of a Player Action or Interactive Placeholder. All checkpoint actions appear in the Checkpoints chart under the Engagement tab in the Analytics Dashboard.

Checkpoints in Action

Let's look at an example. In this video only some viewers will get a scene with a special offer. Those who don't get the special offer scene will have a much shorter video. To ensure we know how many viewers watched until the end, we can add a Player Action that reports a checkpoint. We name this action "Reached End".

As we're adding checkpoints, let's also add one for those who watch the special offer. While we can know how many viewers were shown the special offer, we don't know how many of them actually watched it. By adding the checkpoint, we confirm that the playhead passed this point in the video.

  1. While in storybuilder, click the end scene, then click +ADD PLAYER ACTION.
  2. Click the settings button on the Player Action 1 card to open the Player Action settings panel.
  3. Change the settings as follows:
    • Set the event name to "Reached End".
    • Time the action at the number of seconds from the beginning of the scene that signifies the end was reached. In this example, set it to 6 seconds.
    • Set the player action to Report a Checkpoint.
    • Set the action name to "Reached End" as well.
  4. Click OK to save these settings.

Now, when the playhead passes the 6th second of the ending scene, a checkpoint is reported and appears in the Analytics Dashboard's Interactivity tab, under the Checkpoint graph (shown above).

You can repeat these steps to add a similar checkpoint named "Special Offer" to the relevant scene, providing even more clarity.

Moreover, you are not limited to adding checkpoints based on timeline events. You can also add checkpoints to interactive placeholders.