Don’t click this — this is CLICKBAIT
In an increasingly digital world, people, bloggers and companies are continuing to fight for the attention of consumers. The term “clickbait” was popularized in the past few years as advertisement titles or links often contained extreme or essentially false information to attract consumers to click on it.
But, is clickbait going away or have we just been getting used to it?
First, looking at Google Trend analytics, we see the term “clickbait” reached a peak in late 2019, but has been declining in search interest in general over the past few years.
This begs to ask the question — Clickbait was brought to the attention of consumers over the past few years, but now have we simply gotten used to it?
The answer is it depends (yes, the answer that no one likes to hear).
On one side, we have adtech that is increasingly becoming more complex and sophisticated where ads are becoming highly targeted and catered to their audience. The additional scrutiny that consumers are putting on companies or media platforms (e.g., vloggers / bloggers) has definitely encouraged the movement away from clickbait. Furthermore, certain platforms like Facebook have created anti-clickbait campaigns to reduce the number of clickbait posts like the one below.
On the other end, clickbait is how people make money at the end of the day. The more views that media websites or platforms are able to attract to their page, the greater revenue they will be able to generate. There are plenty of YouTubers that continually utilize “Clickbait” titles and have even embraced their Clickbait nature by selling “Clickbait” merchandise as seen with Youtubers David Dobrik and Jason Nash (members of the Vlog Squad). Crazy to think that Youtubers can 1) use clickbait titles to attract views and generate money, and 2) make even more money by selling “clickbait” merchandise by embracing their nature. And the crazy thing is, viewers don’t even care at least in the case of David Dobrik as seen with his success (albeit he does deliver entertainment in the videos even though the titles may not be 100% true).
So moving forward, is clickbait going away or have we just started normalizing it and hence the less attention given to it? It is probably a mix of the two. Some clickbait does more damage than others as some may actually lead to scams, which would be actual fraud / illegal, and I would expect this to be reduced, but some level of clickbait will probably continue as there is always a grey area of whether using “extreme” or “buzzwords” entails false information or is it simply one’s opinion?
Comment what you think.
