It’s been nearly seven years since Google first introduced annotations for YouTube. The feature allows uploaders to add links or captions to their videos and is commonly used for corrections, clarifications, and links to other related videos.
Google announced a significant update to annotations and how they’re displayed.’ The goal is to make annotations more useful for mobile users and more flexible for those uploading content. This new breed of annotation comes in the form of interactive cards that allow video creators to point viewers towards other videos as well as playlists, external websites or even merchandise.
Of course, this increase in diversity means bigger annotations that take up more space. As the name ‘Cards’ implies, these types of links will appear with a preview image as well as a description on a white background. Unlike annotations, they don’t sit on top of the video like a small caption. In fact, judging by Google’s screenshots, they take up about 25% of your phone’s display. It’s not clear if users will be able to turn these off or if they’ll be restricted to certain times in the video (like right at the beginning or right at the end) to prevent distraction from the actual content.
Google says the cards will exist alongside annotations until the latter’s functionality can be completely replicated by cards. Uploaders can find cards under a new dedicated “Cards” tab in the video editor.
[source]YouTube[/source]
