Big news for all avid YouTube watchers! As of December 14^th, YouTube is implementing their new plan to remove in-video pop-up links, livestreams and playlists. This is a huge relief since many of these links contain spam-like content, dead links or stream that are no longer live.

According to Digital Trends, there were two main reasons for this: dissatisfaction of users and poor click rate:

The video platform says that only about one in every 20 viewers actually clicked on those links. When linked to live-streams, some of those links took viewers to streams that were no longer live and not available for playback.

Because of the low click rate and user feedback that the in-video notifications feel like spam, YouTube will be removing them from the advertising options, so after mid-December, viewers won’t see those mid-video pop-ups. 

However, although viewers are pleased, marketers are a bit less enthused about the limited options. But YouTube assures us that their more recent marketing options are much more efficacious.

YouTube suggests advertisers using the format should switch to cards or video links that pop up at the end of those videos, which the company says is more effective. That is only a solution for YouTube links and the platform suggests listing outside links in the description, as well as on a channel page or inside artwork uploaded to the site.

It looks like the video platform has their bases covered. The only concern now is that some older videos have incorporated the pop-ups into their videos. These videos will now appear slightly disjointed since they point to links which will not appear.

In light of how this new update will clear YouTube of spammy content, we don’t think this slight issue is a big deal. What are your thoughts?