YouTube to Remove Credits and Annotations, Test Out Back-to-back Ads

Much like the rest of the internet, YouTube has established numerous steps to optimize the user experience on mobile. When it comes to mobile-friendliness, the YouTube mobile app is truly a handy and reliable app that allows you to watch videos on the go, while offering full functionality that allows you to record and stream live.

With more users going mobile, this also means that some processes and details must also be updated to keep up with the times. This means removing some seldom-used features and elements to streamline the process, while also testing out possible changes that might impact revenue and user experience.

For YouTube, the newest set of updates aim to remove credits and annotations in editing, while testing out back-to-back ads that play before a video starts. Here are our thoughts, how it works, and how these can affect the user experience.

Removing Credits

Video credits in YouTube allows users to be able to tag users and channels that they have collaborated with when creating a video. This ensures that users and channels would be credited and recognized properly and allow users to discover different related channels. Despite its benefits, it has become a feature that has been used less and less, which leads to YouTube removing the feature altogether.

While the feature to tag users and channels has been removed, adding credits can still be done when writing the description of your video, which is a practice done by more users recently. This has become more common on different videos and looks to be the more practical approach that will be the standard. This smoothens the editing process, while still giving users the ability to give credit to their fellow users.

Removing Annotations

Along with removing credits, YouTube will also remove video annotations by January 2019. Annotations have been no longer in use since 2017, but videos that contain them are still present. This update would remove them entirely, especially when watching videos. Annotations do not appear when viewed on mobile, which is why the feature was no longer in use. With better calls to action that are more visually appealing, this feature has become outdated. If you have a video that still contains annotations, it is best to wait for the update before adding necessary changes to create a better experience.

Back-to-back Advertisements

Ads have become a regular part of YouTube ever since the playing of ads before a video has been somewhat a standard practice. This not only helps various channels generate income, but also helps users discover different things such as brands, viral campaigns, and new products and websites. While ads may have affected the user experience for better or for worse, it is a necessary feature that helps bring in more revenue to the platform.

With this in mind, YouTube will begin to test out back-to-back advertisements that play before a video starts. This means an average of 2-5 minutes before watching a video. While this will allow more revenue and brand exposure, this might be a controversial feature, as a lot of users still adjusting to watching ads before videos. Since this is still at testing phase, there might be a chance for this to change, or to not happen at all. With this in mind, it is best to respond to official surveys, and leave reviews to ensure that YouTube would be able to bring impactful changes to the user experience.

YouTube SEO Impact

With these new updates, users would have to adjust accordingly when giving credit and optimizing their YouTube SEO experience. This means that along with making sure the description makes it searchable and informative, fellow users must be properly credited. As for the ads, this is something that might impact the viewer count. However, just as long you deliver quality content that is searchable, you will not have any issues with getting traffic into your videos.

Key Takeaway

YouTube has seen numerous changes over the years, and these updates are there to optimize a few details to optimize the user experience. With these set of updates, expect YouTube to continue making the viewing experience much better on any platform.

If you have questions and inquiries about YouTube or SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.