How can I track PDF Analytics Interactions and Pageviews within a PDF DOC without Embed API

[DhanA2]

Hi Team,

Hello forum members! I'm currently exploring ways to track interactions and pageviews within a PDF document without relying on the Embed API. While I've come across suggestions that involve using the Embed API, I'm interested in discovering alternative methods to achieve this tracking. Could anyone kindly share insights or experiences in this area? Your input will be greatly appreciated!

CCing Top Contributors for Quick Response
@Jennifer_Dungan  @PratheepArunRaj  @yuhuisg 

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, I am unaware of any other solution for embedded analytics (i.e. actually tracking the engagement within the PDF)

We don't produce a lot of PDFs, and the ones we do are generally coming from our Editorial teams / other sources and provided as a resource on our articles... as such, trying to get proper embedded tracking into those files (from mostly non-technical people) hasn't been a priority for us... we just do the simple "download pdf" metrics.

I assume that this is a similar challenge for you, how do you get the people who are authoring these PDFs to properly embed tracking, and I don't really have an answer.

The only other option I can think of (and bear in mind that this is completely untested and may not work at all) would be to embed a non-JS tracking pixel / hardcoded image inside the PDF... this wouldn't give you a lot of granularity, it would probably just track once upon opening when the pixel is loaded as an image resource.... (this will also inflate your Visits and Unique Visitors numbers as there will be no proper User Identification or cookies to remember anything about the user)

If you are interesting in investigating that option, here is how to hardcode an image request:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/implementation/other/hardcoded.html?lang=en 

[DhanA2]

@Jennifer_Dungan Thanks for  your response, Another issue is I have to track my downloads or view of my PDFs which loaded directly from Google search results do we have any solutions for this?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Unfortunately no... I suppose with the Embed API you would be able to track opening of the PDF (I don't know if there would be referrer info available or not so you would know it came from Google, or maybe from the user's hard drive), or if it would simply be an "open".

If you have downloads tracked on your website, I know it's not exactly one to one necessarily someone opening it right away, but you could create a calculated metric between downloads from your site and opens (and get an approximate opens from "other sources")

I know you are looking for other solutions beyond the Embed API, but given that you want detailed analytics I don't see many other options.

I don't know if that API could be embedded through an automated process... like maybe when PDFs are uploaded into your CMS, could the PDFs be processed into including your Embed API code? This could take the onus off of staff to embed it, and get you the stats that you want....