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Publishers Are Making More Video -- Whether You Want It or Not (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Mic, a website aimed at millennials, used to employ 40 writers and editors producing articles on topics like "celebrating beauty" and "strong women." Ten were let go this month, with most in the revamped newsroom of 63 now focused on making videos for places like Facebook. Critics have called such moves "100 percent cynical" and out of sync with audience demand. Yet Americans are watching more video snippets online, either because they secretly like them or because they're getting harder to avoid. The growing audience for video, more valuable to advertisers than the space next to words, is causing websites to shift resources in what's become known across the industry as the pivot to video. Americans are expected to spend 81 minutes a day watching digital video in 2019, up from 61 minutes in 2015, according to projections by research firm eMarketer. Time spent reading a newspaper is expected to drop to 13 minutes a day from 16 minutes during that time. The question is whether those trends will sustain the growing number of outlets flooding social networks with video clips. Mic, a New York-based news site founded in 2011, was just the latest to fire writers when it announced its pivot to video this month. Dozens of writers and editors have also been laid off this summer at news outlets like Vocativ, Fox Sports, Vice and MTV News. All of the moves were tied in part to focusing more resources on making videos. Publishers are heading in this direction even though polls show consumers find video ads more irritating than TV commercials. Google and Apple are testing features that let you mute websites with auto-play videos or block them entirely. More young Americans prefer reading the news than watching it, according to a survey last year by the Pew Research Center. But many publishers have little choice.
Just because they make videos (content or ads) doesn't mean I have to watch them. Create away!
... to not click-to-play, and focus on more worthy web pages?
None whatsoever.
I find videos horribly inefficient at relaying information. Maybe it's because I'm a fast reader, or I can skim for certain words. Videos for the sake of entertainment, fine, but for the sake of learning unless it's something highly visual I would way rather read it. If I click on a news story and it's a video I exit out. Not worth my time to consume it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Stopped reading after that.
Mic, a website aimed at millennials, used to employ 40 writers and editors producing articles on topics like "celebrating beauty" and "strong women." Ten were let go this month, with most in the revamped newsroom of 63 now focused on making videos for places like Facebook.
And nothing of value was lost.
I really do hate videos though; won't watch them. They're a waste of time for me, as I am able to read and comprehend faster than any video can present the information.
This is made worse by the fact that folks who make the video seem intent on wasting even more time with intros and other cruft before getting to the subject.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
So much easier to highlight and search claims to fact check rather than scrubbing through a video.
Both are likely heavily slanted to fit their makers opinions but one way is easier to get competing views.
People won't know how to read. Baby steps...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
All told in the current Atlantic mag. And yeah, a Fuckface connection.
More and more people are ignoring your bullshit videos. Whether you want it or not.
Welcome to the free market, bitches. If you don't provide it, someone else will.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But many publishers have little choice.
Advertisers want stats. They want to know every little thing they can about an audience even if it doesn't help them. They can sell the data on to someone else who thinks they can extract the value.
Why is this relevant to the article? Because videos help gather that info for them. You'll notice, that alongside this rise in video content, is a there's a rise in the amount of hosted content. It can get the demo info by being linked to a Facebook profile or to a YouTube profile or whatever platform is hosting the video. Few sites will self-host the content not because they can't afford it, but because it won't have the same demographic information. What FB has been able to do is to put together a standard format of data to be used by advertisers. That's hugely useful for their datamining efforts.
Just how useful all this demographic info is an entirely different discussion to have. I don't think it's very useful, at least not nearly as useful as the advertisers think or want it will be.
Unless publishers plan to do vlog-style videos (i.e., "Watch me as I make the news!"), they still need script writers to pull everything together before they start shooting video.
...am I the only one that DESPISES video-delivered content?
Sure, there are contexts where it's very helpful, like some DIY videos or somesuch.
But in terms of news or general information on a subject, video content is WORSE than a bloody voicemail: it's linear, it's high-bandwidth, it's usually packed full of ads and crap or front/back stingers that are half the length of the video, and ultimately info-lite.
-Styopa
Videos are great! I mean, who DOESN'T want to watch a 10 tutorial minute video to find out what used to be in a half-page article?
Before you could just look at the words and picture and figure out what settings are needed on your phone etc, but that's old-school. Now I can listen to some guy named Frank narrate how to do it AND learn about his cat, other youtube channels, and girlfriend issues!
It's even better when you're trying to figure out some shell command and you get to rewind a dozen times to figure out what it was they speed-typed that scrolled past almost instantly, because text articles and cut+paste is for LOSERS! Of course I don't have to worry about manually dealing with all videos, some play themselves *automatically* for me, usually buried in some random webpage at max volume just to make sure I don't miss hearing about how to deal with adult intimacy issues and incontinence!
My cellphone provider loves it too. All that extra bandwidth we get to use in overage fees sure makes their profits go up!
I noticed lots of news websites stopped showing photos with their news articles and now only show a video of those photos, I just skip the story all together. Another one is the slide out video ad that pushes down the article text as you read. Who the fuck came up with that idea?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Website revenues from picture/click/text ads have been declining in recent years, mostly through adblockers/etc. Video ads generate more per mil than other types of ads. So how do you make users view video ads? With autoplay! If it were just ads, the users would get upset, so producers have to include some content there. Even if it's moronic derps doing a 5th grade level summary of the article.
It doesn't matter if you're reading the content on the page, the video will still play. And to prevent not getting full payment for the ad, the video will follow you as you scroll down the page reading text.
To make matters worse, the videos are now HTML5 and many browsers haven't baked in controls to disable autoplay html5 videos (Looking at you Metro-IE!).
Since this makes more money, I'd imagine more content will be pushed this way.
My guess would be that the publishers show their advertisers the number of times the video played, even if the no one actually watched it.
So, it's a giant scam.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You know, somehow this story seems to lack punch. Bloomberg needs to do something to jazz it up a little.
(If only they gave us some obvious hypocrisy to complain about, then it might really go viral.)
There is no time/place for watching a video, especially ones with more style than substance, hot takes full of hot garbage.
A concise article is always preferable, easier to read, don't need to find earbuds etc, can't copy and paste from a video to quote to friends etc
Twinstiq, game news
It took me around 5 minutes to find those option. I am way more happy now.
I had to install a video autoplay blocker because CNN autoplays videos, usually with ads, and no way to pause them as they remove the pause button.
Well, you can click on the video ad and be directed to the ad site in another tab, pausing it of course.
No thanks, CNN.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
If they fire all the writers, who will write the scripts for the videos?
At the beginning there was HTML. It was easily accessible for anyone with the simplest of text editors like notepad.exe on windows. Since anyone could put a few lines of HTML code and publish it, almost everyone, and their mother, did... I can still remember the horrendous hot pink background home pages some people created. Or even worse, flashing red marquees, or animated GIFs. Gawd.. more I think, more I get nauseated. What is different today ? Well everyone, and again, their mother, have a smartphone with camera which can shoot video. And sites like YouTube or Vimeo or many other similar sites, provide a platform to publish these videos for free. And everyone thinks that, taking a picture of their dog pooping, is so interesting for the rest of us and I should watch this drivel repeatedly. There is gluttony of resources and people with too much free time in their hands, with the idea of striking it rich like pewdiepie or Justin friggen Bieber. What could go wrong ? And yet we are here...
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
Mic, a New York-based news site founded in 2011, was just the latest to fire writers when it announced its pivot to video this month.
They don't need writers to create these videos? Is whomever is in/narrating/subtitling the video just winging it?
are little girls in skimpy leotards. giggidy
I don't want videos to autoplay (I am looking forward to chromes update to prevent videos from autoplaying). Making more videos over content is clearly a misguided understanding of viewers, at least for me. Typically I am listening to music when I browse. Nothing more annoying that some @#$@# video playing while I am listening to music.
I've always said English was my second language. Had Romeo and Juliet been written in C, I might have understood it.
Do they seriously expect me to constantly disturb everyone around me by playing video with sound on my smartphone? In a world where people have less and less available time, they expect me to sit through 10-20 minute videos instead of reading through the same content in a couple of minutes? Yeah, not gonna happen.
wherz da news babe too reed dis sumery in a vid. iTs two long.
I can't recall the clever name, but it was on my atv. I watched it once in a while, and often remembered thinking it was interesting information and ideas being oresented and it'd sure be swell to read about them.
If I want to watch a video I watch TV.
Now get off my lawn
I often use my laptop with my cell phone, which gives only a couple paltry gigabytes of tether data/mo, and when I get a video ad, it eats up my data conveying the same information that a static .pngcwould do. I get pissed off, and I don't visit the site anymore, thus depriving the site of more ad views/clicks. I can use an ad blocker, but the end result for them would be the same.
How about ads that are static, terse and gets to the point without a ton of
moronic fluff?
Videos rank right up there with my other pet peeve - people sending me pictures of text they want me to analyse for troubleshooting.
They fetched such and such a (huge) URL or they submitted this (huge) query and got such and such an error so they send me a screenshot. Now I have to type the whole thing in to reproduce their issue.
To top it, they usually resize the image to make it smaller for email so now the text is minuscule and blurry too.
Nullius in verba
Mic was a toxic piece of shit that published hateful, bigoted, ignorant, clickbait content and pushed a narrative at all costs to the truth.
Fuck them and fuck everyone who worked for them to perpetuate that.
So next to burst is the big video bubble I guess
Twinstiq, game news
That is all.
Stupid people find reading difficult and watching video easy. Who's going to buy your product? Readers tend to think watchers not so much. For advertisers the case for video is strong.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I'm nearly 59 and I hate video news as well. The only exception is if there's actually something visual and moving to show, and even then I'd rather have text with the story and a link to the clip.
some folks are just visual learners. You can pack a lot more information in a video if you try. But you're correct. If it's the same information you'd have gotten from reading it's frustrating (unless it's something along the lines of a podcast, I can't read when I'm driving, for example).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Digg.com is a poster child of that phrase
Since Digg came out with their much vaunted version 4 at the end of August, the social media blogs have documented in detail the trail of disaster which will surely become a case study in how to screw up a social site in business courses across the land. http://www.techradar.com/news/...
Look who funds it.
The prevalence of auto-play videos that run in a small box, muted, and are difficult to block is likely to be taken as evidence that people are consuming the media, and as such, want more. After all if your browser is recieving them it counts as a play for advertising purposes. The whole thing is a scam feedback loop to drive claims of general popular support.
Most of the time I close the page as soon as I see them but by that time it is already too late.
Actually ubiquitous autoplaying video content is just another step in project MKRAGE to turn us all into constantly pissed off raving lunatics intent in nothing more than the destruction of the no-me.
cf 2016 election onwards
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I hope they all sue because there are no closed captions.
There are no millennials, there is no avocado toast, and they are not killing businesses. They do not exist. The entire muhlenniuhl bullshit is completely made up by the media so they can feign outrage at a bogeyman for clicks.
I'm way to late and nobody's going to see this, but the real point of video vs text is that it's harder to copy video without acknowledging the original source. This is why the news networks love it. CNN can write a story, I can scrape it with a bot and put it on my website, with my ads and no credit to them-no problem. I can also take CNN's video and host it, but when I do it obviously came from CNN. Even if I use it to push my ads, the viewer knows it's not my content, and will be more likely to look straight to the source next time. This logic applies even moreso to people who do instructional material, why put a bunch of effort into a text that will be shamelessly copied and used on some scammy website? With a video the content is inherently connected with name recognition and is easily traced back to the creator.
I hate it because I would rather read, but I understand why it's happening.
If I click on a link to an article and it starts a video I shut it off. If I can't kill the video, I leave the site.
I have no interest in sitting through a video to see if there is anything of interest. I an quickly skim a written article to see if it is worth reading. Naturally my browser preferences are going to change to reflect being better able to control the content. Chrome's days are probably numbered on my machine.
thethreeweekdietsystem1.blogspot.com , give a looks please ! thanks
Hard subs or DVD-style image-of-text subs would work for the seeing deaf, and I imagine it'd be hard to find enough deafblind users to build standing.
This is why I wrote a browser extension for my main desktop browser that literally blocks it from being able to play any media (video or audio) at all. I'd rather do without YouTube and Netflix on the desktop than have to deal will this deluge of crap.