Why Embed Videos

When a video is played “streamed” on a website, many background processes are happening. The video player needs to know what device the user is using and therefore what video file types it is capable of playing. It needs to know how big the screen is and it needs to know how fast the user’s connection is.

If any of these things are ignored, the user either gets to see nothing or may have a video that stops and starts which we all know is very annoying.

This is the main reason why embedding videos from video libraries like YouTube is a good idea. They handle all these possibilities and they adapt to changing technologies and handle everything for us. So we produce your videos, upload them to YouTube and then embed the YouTube video on your website.

The Problem With YouTube

Until recently, YouTube was the the go to for this video embedding. Now however, with a few changes of their policies, it is no longer possible to embed videos from YouTube without the user seeing some unwanted content. This content now includes:

• A list of other videos in the same account
• The video title
• The avatar of the account owner

In the past, once your video ended, the viewer would be shown a list of related videos. These would have varying degrees of relevance and may even include videos from your competitors.

We were able to suppress this behaviour until October 2018 by adding a little tag to the video URL.

Now that same tag does remove the related videos but it replaces them with “more videos” from the same YouTube Account. This could be handy if you were showcasing your video prowess, but when you’re tailoring a page for a purpose, it’s just a distraction away from your marketing funnel. What’s more, these don’t just show at the end of the video, but whenever it is paused, even before playback begins in some cases.

You can see in the image above, some of the other clutter that is now enforced upon users of YouTube’s embedding

The Solutions

Create a single YouTube account for each video you embed. Very clumsy and untested idea. 

Move away from YouTube to alternative video hosting.

Vimeo has different membership options. Their free account also forces a list of recommended videos into view at the end of the playback. Their paid accounts give the option to remove this altogether and start at $9 USD per month

Enter Daily Motion

Daily Motion is the saviour here. Touted as the world’s second largest video library, these folk still enable the suppression of related videos, titles and accounts for free accounts. Stands to reason that this will become an advantage as agencies like us will start to move their content away from YouTube and toward Daily Motion. 

We Can Help

If you don’t want those pesky icons on your beautiful video, distracting people away from your product, service or premises, call us, or email us and we let you know what’s involved in getting switched over.