RIP YouTube Annotations, Hello Cards and End Screens

It’s official! YouTube discontinued those hideous but charming, annotations today.

Users are now only able to delete existing YouTube annotations and those remaining will continue to be displayed on desktop computers.

This change comes with the increasing amount of users using mobile devices to watch videos on YouTube. With 60% of traffic coming from mobile devices, annotations have become outdated.

To keep up with the way people digest their content, YouTube has created mobile-friendly alternatives. That’s where YouTube cards and end screens come into play. These two new enhancements link to related videos, channels, and websites. The use of annotations has dropped by over 70% with the introduction of cards and end screens.

Here are some advantages of YouTube cards and end screens:

• Cards and end screens have a high engagement rate among users. These features generate seven times more clicks across the platform.
• End screens are up to 10 times faster to create than adding annotations.
• Users can also import end screens from other videos or use dynamic overlays, which saves even more time.

We hope this helped you to understand why YouTube phased out annotations and why you should start implementing YouTube cards and end screens.

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