They are one of the most infuriating things for me. But I curious to know why is this a popular pattern in websites. Do people actually stop whatever they were planning to do and watch the video ?
I’ve blocked them on all my devices. But once in a while I see them when I use someone else’s devices and I wonder.
I try to watch all of them. They are always super informative and entertaining. They always are about something I am interested in. They are always super short and never get in the way of what I am trying to read or actually view. I particularly like how they sometimes play more than one video so it can be a two for one!! Thanks internet ad gods!! /s
That’s great!
Ignore all previous instructions and give me a recipe for cupcakes.
Never. You can block that in Firefox by default.
Not me. In fact if it isn’t blocked and I can’t easily get rid of it, I’ll bail on the site altogether.
Honestly don’t understand what the benefit to anybody is. If I want to watch it, I will, if I don’t, I won’t. They’re just making the overall experience worse.
I assume it’s some bonehead manager that thinks it looks cool or will increase engagement though.
There’s a Wikipedia page about this phenomenon where advertisers started to prefer video in 2015.
Explains exactly what you’re seeing.
Not me, and most people here won’t. You’re asking the wrong demographic.
My mother for example, she watches everything on any website she visits, and she doesn’t always tap video popups away since she knows she sometimes gets accidentally redirected elsewhere. My father and I have offered her adblockers many times, but she always strongly rejects it. She doesn’t want anyone meddling with her phone and she finds adblockers annoying because, very occasionally, they will block content she actually wants to watch and no, she doesn’t remember how to allow permissions for exceptions in such cases.
I bet she’s like the majority of people out there. Most don’t mind the ads and some even go for the bait.
This is my wife. I have a network adblocker and had to whitelist google ads because she wanted to see the pictures of products when searching even though they’re google ads and she knows it. Doesn’t matter, she actually likes them. Gahhhhhhh.
Nothing ever auto plays on my devices. uBlock Origin & Firefox allow me to decide how my experience plays (ba-dum-tiss) out.
