Find Your Most Engaged Viewers with PixelYourSite Video Speed Tracking

The stack

• PixelYourSite Pro 12.5.4 or later
• A configured GA4 Measurement Protocol connection in PYS Pro
• At least one HTML5, YouTube, or Vimeo video on your site

1. Turn the event on

PixelYourSite Pro → Dashboard → Track key actions with the automatic events → Track Video Speed Increase (global) → on.

No other settings. The event fires on every speed change for HTML5, YouTube, and Vimeo videos. By default it ships to Facebook, GA4, Google Ads, Bing, and TikTok.

The player is recorded in video_type (html5, youtube, or vimeo), so you can slice reports by platform.

2. Register parameters in GA4

The event ships five parameters. Two matter for reporting.

GA4 → Admin → Custom definitions → Custom dimensions → Create. Add two rows, scope Event:

Register the others (video_url, video_type, element) only if you’ll use them.

Custom Dimensions populate standard reports within 24 hours. Realtime shows events immediately.

3. View the data

Realtime — confirm setup

GA4 → Reports → Realtime. Change a video’s speed on your site. VideoSpeed appears within seconds.

Engagement — day-to-day

GA4 → Reports → Life cycle → Engagement → Events. Click VideoSpeed. Switch the dimension dropdown to Video title or Playback speed.

Exploration — deep view

GA4 → Explore → Blank → Free form.

1. Date range: Last 30 days.
2. Dimensions: Event name, Video title, Playback speed.
3. Metrics: Event count, Total users.
4. Rows: Video title, Playback speed.
5. Values: Event count, Total users.
6. Filter: Event name exactly matches VideoSpeed.
7. Sort by Event count descending.

Save as Video speed — last 30 days.

You now see, per video, whether viewers speed up or slow down.

4. Read the patterns

Mostly speed-ups (1.25, 1.5, 2). Content is too slow or too padded. Trim the intro, tighten pacing, test a shorter cut.

Mostly slow-downs (0.75, 0.5). Content is dense or moves too fast. Add chapters, captions, timestamps. 0.5× often means pausing too — split the topic into a shorter tutorial.

Both directions on the same video. Mixed audience. Add chapters so each viewer can skip to what they need.

5. Decide what to make more of

Speed changes per view = engagement quality. Use it to drive content decisions.

Compare videos. Sort by speed changes per video. Top of the list = your hits. Make more like them. Bottom = cut or replace.

Compare sources. Add Session source / medium as a row dimension. Find the channels that bring viewers who actually engage. Often not your biggest channel.

Compare pages. Swap Video title for Page path + query string. Same video on a different page can perform very differently.

Run this report once a month. Pick the top 5 videos and top 3 sources. Decide what to expand and what to cut.

6. Combine with WatchVideo

PYS has two automatic video events that work well together:

• WatchVideo — fires on play and at the progress milestones you choose (25, 50, 75, 100). Tells you the video is interesting enough to start and how far viewers watch.
• VideoSpeed — fires on every speed change. Tells you the viewer is engaged enough to reach for the controls.

Same interest, different engagement signal. WatchVideo is your baseline. VideoSpeed is the stronger active signal layered on top.

Combined report

GA4 → Explore → Blank → Free form.

1. Date range: Last 30 days.
2. Dimensions: Event name, Video title.
3. Metrics: Event count, Total users.
4. Rows: Video title, Event name.
5. Values: Event count, Total users.
6. Filter: Event name matches regex ^(WatchVideo|VideoSpeed)$.
7. Sort by Video title, then Event count.

Save as Video engagement — last 30 days.

Each video shows two rows. VideoSpeed ÷ WatchVideo = engagement-quality ratio.

• High ratio: viewers interact. Make more like this.
• Low ratio: passive viewers. Fine for awareness, not enough for conversion work.

Engaged-viewer audience

GA4 → Admin → Audiences → New audience → Build a custom audience:

• Include users where Event name = WatchVideo AND progress = 75 (or 100).
• Include users where Event name = VideoSpeed (any value).
• Combine with AND.
• Membership duration: 90 days.

Push to Google Ads as a similar-audience seed once a few hundred users qualify.

7. Volume

VideoSpeed is a low-volume event. A 5,000-session site with one popular video sees a few dozen per month. That’s enough to read patterns, not enough to:

• Power a Meta or Google Ads optimisation campaign (those need hundreds of conversions per week).
• Build a lookalike audience from VideoSpeed alone.

For ad platforms, use the combined audience in section 6.

What this won’t catch

• Cross-origin iframes you don’t control. Speed-change events can’t escape them.
• Scrubbing. Jumping the timeline doesn’t trigger ratechange, so a viewer who skips around without touching the speed control won’t appear here.

For URL-filtered or direction-only speed tracking, use the Embedded Video speed trigger inside a Custom Event (Creating Custom Events).