The Conversion Killer: Autoplaying Videos In 2020

I’m a digital marketer by profession, so there are few marketing techniques that I won’t try at least once.

Autoplaying videos are one of them.

Imagine that you’re on a crowded bus, surfing the web to kill time until you reach your stop. You click on a link, and suddenly a video pops up and plays. Before you can mute it, your fellow commuters know that you’ve got problems that only Viagra can solve.

Video is now the wunderkind of the digital marketing world. There’s no question that if a picture says a thousand words, video captures a million of them, which is likely why it converts more site visitors than practically any other form of marketing.

But does it really need to have autoplaying videos? No, and here are some reasons why.

1 — It annoys the heck out of people

No one likes being made into a captive audience. Personally speaking, I want to decide whether or not to watch a video embedded on a landing page. If autoplaying videos are pushed on me, it’s annoying, and I’m automatically suspicious of the advertised products or services.