YouTube plans to stop mid-video pop-up links based on it feeling more like spam advertising
Sometimes it’s nice to have a random meander on YouTube. There is, however, a very annoying factor, and it’s not the unskippable videos. It’s those links that periodically pop up. The ones intended by the creator to often divert you somewhere else. In addition, they can often be a minefield to traverse to get your video back.
While it is only an inconvenience to close the links, it does generally tend to interfere with your viewing. It even garnered a number of complaints from users who thought it was spam rather than legitimate advertising.
They’re not tweaking the algorithm, thank the lord, as that often just leads to more disasters.
Well, good news! YouTube has announced that they plan to finally get rid of them. No more getting up to very accurately click the advert down. You will still have to tolerate those unskippable videos though.
Improving your viewing pleasure
In fairness, while only a mild inconvenience, they were annoying. Therefore the removal of them should see a genuine improvement in general viewing.
In a statement via the Independent, YouTube has said: “Recently, we’ve taken a look at how successful the interactive bar is and how often people actually use it. We’ve come to realize that very few actually click on it. In fact, only one in twenty people click on the suggested link. Even worse, for the small percentage of users who do click on the link, they’re often taken to a live stream that no longer exists. As a result, many folks complain that it feels like spam.”
While YouTube does acknowledge that some content creators do use these for genuine channel advertising, it ultimately feels that some take this too far. Well, except those content creators trying to do Nintendo. They’re just getting DMCA’s.
While they are removing them from the videos, people will still be allowed to post links in the description. The change should come into effect on December 14th.
What do you think? A good idea or another nail in the creator’s coffin? – Let us know in the comments!
