Shutterstock<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nYouTube has completely changed how videographers\u00a0share their work. Rewind twelve years, and websites that featured a showreel video<\/strong> were usually slow to load, unreliable, and had poor video resolution. Fast forward to the present, and you can upload 4k media<\/strong> and share it with virtually\u00a0anybody in the world.<\/p>\nYouTube, as a platform, offers several\u00a0in-video tools such as captions and annotations<\/strong>. Annotations are the small colorful shapes that can appear throughout a video. They can direct you to other videos, present subscription options, or present\u00a0a snippet of text<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAnnotations are great for business and showcase videos because you can essentially add information after you have uploaded the video<\/strong>. One of the unfortunate aspects of YouTube, unlike Vimeo, is that you cannot\u00a0amend a video after you’ve uploaded it (high-ranking channels may have some leeway with this). Annotations have been a good workaround for this problem. However, now it\u2019s time to get rid of them.<\/p>\n
\nThe End of Annotations<\/strong><\/h3>\nWhile annotations have been incredibly helpful, they\u2019ve out-stayed their welcome. The\u00a0primary reason is that more than half of all views on YouTube are on\u00a0mobile devices<\/strong>, and annotations only appear in desktop or laptop browsers. What good is a clickable link when only half of your viewership can see\u00a0it? As such, new annotations will be discontinued tomorrow<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\nWhat’s the alternative? Interactive cards.<\/strong><\/p>\n