The End of the Autoplay Video is Near

Brian Gioia
Jul 28, 2017 · 5 min read

One thing I learned very quickly when I got a GoPro is that no one wants to watch my videos. Why would someone take time out of their day to watch videos of me skiing or playing with my dog. I have also realized that I don’t want to watch other people’s videos. Unless they are truly great AND I am in the right setting. I am certainly in no mood to watch a video when I am at work without my headphones and I click a link to an article and a video starts playing for all my coworkers to hear.

All Video, All The Time

My workplace interruptions are due in large part to the proliferation of online video. Many media outlets have recently announced pivots to video at the expense of the printed word. In my opinion, this pivot represents a commitment to revenue over substance. Video — at the moment — drives more revenue than the printed word does. Simple ROI calculations on the part of media companies are driving these changes. These are businesses that need to generate revenue, so they can’t be faulted for chasing advertising dollars. What concerns me is that letting writers go in favor of people that can produce video sounds a lot like shifting dollars from breaking news and telling great stories to slick video production. That is prioritizing style over substance.

Video is not evil and should absolutely be a part of every media company and web publisher’s strategy. Consumers love video. But they won’t watch something just because it exists in video format. Substance is what matters. I do not get the feeling that publishers are bought into that concept every time I see a video autoplay in my browser.

Enough with the autoplay

I was relieved to learn recently that I am not alone in loathing the recent pivot to video that many media companies are making. Perhaps I am also not alone in how I feel about autoplay videos. If you are like me, you reserve a special level of hatred for the dreaded autoplay video. These vile intrusions help websites artificially increase the number of plays they can report for these crappy videos (if they were good, they wouldn’t need them to play automatically). Therefore, they increase the revenue they are able to generate from the videos that no one is actually watching and often have nothing to do with the content on that web page.

Good news came from Digiday, reporting that advertisers have caught on to the fact that nobody wants to watch these videos. Associating your brand with an autoplay video is not going to engender brand affection. Further, Digiday quotes Bernard Gershon who explains that advertisers are on to the great con of autoplay artificially inflating video numbers. The next step will hopefully be to begin shifting ad spend elsewhere.

Context

The proliferation of video and autoplay makes it clear that publishers and advertisers are ignoring the rules of digital advertising. The promise of digital is that advertisers can reach the right consumer, with the right message, at the right time in the right context. I may be ready to purchase a new car, but Volvo had better not hit me with an ad when I am googling my son’s flu-like symptoms. Hit me with an ad when the context is appropriate (when I am searching car-related items or just wasting time on social media). Why on earth would these same rules not apply to video?

Younger generations are consuming an increasing amount of video and video is generating an increasing share of digital ad revenue. Even I will, on occasion, want to watch a video of a baby hippo at the Cincinnati Zoo. I just want video — and so does the rest of the world — when the context is right. And the universal signal that the context is right when a consumer is on the right platform: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, or (very soon) Amazon. Consumers do not go to The New York Times website to consume videos. They go there to consume news and stories. If the editors at the Times believe that the best way to convey a story or break news is through video — have at it. I would caution that if the Times really wants us to watch video, it should reach us on Facebook and definitely not by automatically playing a video for all of our coworkers to hear as soon as we land on its website.

Isn’t this just a symptom of the content bubble?

Everyone is creating, financing or trying to monetize video content today. No one seems to care if any of it is good. It does feel a lot like a bubble. However, the real issue with the current state of video is the fact that publishers are monetizing videos that nobody is even watching — they just START to play. Would advertisers want to purchase airtime on a radio station based on the number of people that flip past that station’s frequency? Or would they prefer to make purchases based on the number of people that actually listen at the time their ad played?

Is there an end in sight?

The good news is that Facebook, YouTube and Amazon appear to be on a mission to make it more lucrative for quality content to live on their platforms. This may not be good news if you fear the duopoly/triopoly, but once the content centralizes, the cream will rise to the top. Advertisers will also centralize their spending on these platforms. Top performers will command a higher share of the revenue. Then, it will no longer be so lucrative for publishers like Vice to produce video content that automatically plays because advertisers won’t be fooled by their numbers anymore. Vice can focus on what it does best — telling stories — and select the medium through which they tell their stories based on user preference, not revenue. In fact, in a more efficient market, if they get their media mix correct, revenue will be optimized. News websites won’t abandon video, but they will return their focus to being the best at breaking news and storytelling, not producing the best cut video.

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