Video Play Event

A video play event is the event recorded the moment a video starts playing, usually carrying the video identifier, its placement and how the play began.

This event is the starting point of all video analysis, since every later rate, from milestone crossings to completion, uses it as the denominator, so any ambiguity in its definition propagates through the whole chain. The most important decision is separating autoplay from a user-initiated play and keeping that distinction as a property on the event itself, otherwise behaviour with no intent behind it is summed with deliberate clicks. Two technical traps recur: re-firing the event after every pause and resume, which inflates the count, and counting the player loading rather than playback actually beginning. The usual fix is to record the start event once per pageview and mark a resume with its own separate event.