4 ms·

I'm not sure why all these websites decided that auto-playing video is a good thing. It's annoying as hell. I click on an article for reading, I'm not clicking

by camus2 9y ago

I'm not sure why all these websites decided that auto-playing video is a good thing. It's annoying as hell. I click on an article for reading, I'm not clicking on a youtube playlist. The latest craze among web designers being videos that follow the reader even when they are scrolling down the page! Enough! Can we have a designer here explaining why they do this? If it's about engagement, i'm not going back to your website if you do that to me once.

danso 9y ago
That scrolly-video you refer to, I wonder if it was an evolutionary response to ad blockers basically shutting down pup-up ad video. So the justification would probably be "the bottom line"
exodust 9y ago
If the video follows you down the page in a paused state, with thumbnail and "play" icon, would this be okay? The video that follows you down the page is trying to help you, not annoy you. It gives you the chance to read the article while having the vision there too. It's only a problem if the video autoplays, which unfortunately is all of the time on all sites that do this.
- JoshTriplett 9y ago
  > If the video follows you down the page in a paused state, with thumbnail and "play" icon, would this be okay? Absolutely not. If the video is useful content, put it front and center, and let the user hit "play" on it; if they scroll it away, accept that they don't want it. If it's unrelated content (as with the thousands of "news" sites that want to autoplay an unrelated "hey look at this completely unrelated garbage" video), put it under a "related stories" column or similar, and stop making it jump around the page to draw attention. The user is already on the page they wanted, their attention is exactly where they want it to be, and your job is to serve them what they want, not what you want. "Engagement" might be easy to measure (hey look, if we pester the hell out of users we get a few more users who accidentally watched the video), but the much better metric for long-term sustainability is "how many users love your site and think 'this is awesome'".
- dylan-m 9y ago
  > It gives you the chance to read the article while having the vision there too. That is not a thing that an actual human is capable of doing. A human has two eyes which must be fixed in the same general direction, and one brain. As convenient as it would be for some interface designers, humans are not octopuses. The cocktail party effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect) is a useful thing to keep in mind when considering the limits of peoples' awareness. It happens for a reason. You may think you can read an article and watch a video at the same time, but the fact is, no, you cannot. One of the two things is making it very hard to focus on the other.
- tripzilch 9y ago
  There's literally nothing I've ever lost by blocking any element that follows me down the page, ever. Video or not.
jkchu 9y ago
I always assumed having video auto-play allows for ads to run in between videos playing. Maybe some sites see that and (woefully) assume it is a good way to increase audience engagement. Either way, I totally agree it is a horrible experience for the audience.
paulmd 9y ago
It's not really a mystery, it's about the ad revenue.

by camus2 9y ago

danso 9y ago

That scrolly-video you refer to, I wonder if it was an evolutionary response to ad blockers basically shutting down pup-up ad video. So the justification would probably be "the bottom line"

exodust 9y ago

If the video follows you down the page in a paused state, with thumbnail and "play" icon, would this be okay? The video that follows you down the page is trying to help you, not annoy you. It gives you the chance to read the article while having the vision there too. It's only a problem if the video autoplays, which unfortunately is all of the time on all sites that do this.

JoshTriplett 9y ago
> If the video follows you down the page in a paused state, with thumbnail and "play" icon, would this be okay? Absolutely not. If the video is useful content, put it front and center, and let the user hit "play" on it; if they scroll it away, accept that they don't want it. If it's unrelated content (as with the thousands of "news" sites that want to autoplay an unrelated "hey look at this completely unrelated garbage" video), put it under a "related stories" column or similar, and stop making it jump around the page to draw attention. The user is already on the page they wanted, their attention is exactly where they want it to be, and your job is to serve them what they want, not what you want. "Engagement" might be easy to measure (hey look, if we pester the hell out of users we get a few more users who accidentally watched the video), but the much better metric for long-term sustainability is "how many users love your site and think 'this is awesome'".
dylan-m 9y ago
> It gives you the chance to read the article while having the vision there too. That is not a thing that an actual human is capable of doing. A human has two eyes which must be fixed in the same general direction, and one brain. As convenient as it would be for some interface designers, humans are not octopuses. The cocktail party effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocktail_party_effect) is a useful thing to keep in mind when considering the limits of peoples' awareness. It happens for a reason. You may think you can read an article and watch a video at the same time, but the fact is, no, you cannot. One of the two things is making it very hard to focus on the other.
tripzilch 9y ago
There's literally nothing I've ever lost by blocking any element that follows me down the page, ever. Video or not.

jkchu 9y ago

I always assumed having video auto-play allows for ads to run in between videos playing. Maybe some sites see that and (woefully) assume it is a good way to increase audience engagement. Either way, I totally agree it is a horrible experience for the audience.

paulmd 9y ago

It's not really a mystery, it's about the ad revenue.