YouTube to discontinue video annotations on May 2nd

YouTube will be discontinuing video annotations and replace them with End Screens and Cards, which are mobile friendly tools that allow you to poll your audience, link to merchandise, recommend videos, and more.

The company stated they are making this change because annotations never really worked on mobile and most viewers actually disliked them.

However, data really drove this decision. With annotations use decreasing by 70% and mobile watch time increasing to 60% of total watch time on YouTube, to keep a tool that creators were not really using and wasn’t even functional now for the majority of viewers, really was pointless.

End Screens and Cards are more engaging for your viewers as data showed End Screens and Cards generate seven times more clicks across YouTube than annotations.

If you are still using annotations, you have until May 2 to phase them out.

We highly suggest that you switch to End Screens and Cards as soon as possible to become familiar with those tools.

Richard Meldner

Richard is co-founder of eSeller365. He has over 17 years of experience on eBay which includes tens of thousands of sales to buyers in over 100 countries and even has experience with eBay’s VeRO program enforcing intellectual property rights for a former employer. And for about two years Richard sold products on Amazon using Amazon FBA in the US.

To “relax” from the daily business grind, for a few weekends a year, he also works for IMSA as a professional race official.