Hello. From today, you will notice that videos embedded in articles on Eurogamer play automatically when you reach them as you scroll down the page, rather than when you click to play them. They will play without sound. This will happen on the desktop site first, and on mobile in the next few days.
We know people don’t love autoplay videos and have resisted making this change as long as we could. But the fact is that the advertising market has recently swung heavily in favour of so-called “pre-roll” video ads – that is, the ads that play before a video begins. Most advertisers are telling us that they have a huge demand for video ad views, and it has become apparent that relying on clicks on videos is not going to get us close to satisfying that demand. So it has become a commercial necessity for us to turn on autoplay – as it has for our competitors, the vast majority of whom have also made this move. Most of Eurogamer’s revenue comes from advertising, so we do need to keep pace with the demands of the advertising market.
Our approach to autoplay video will evolve over time. To begin with, the only change is that videos will play automatically, but in the long run we are going to have to devise a way to keep them in view for a longer period of time as you scroll down the page. We are committed to this solution being as elegant and as unobtrusive as it possibly can be.
Obviously, it’s vital that we host and create video that you actually want to watch after the ad has run. Separate from the Eurogamer and Digital Foundry YouTube channels, we are investing in creating better videos that complement the articles you’re reading – and to that end, we’re currently hiring for a video producer.
About those cookie notices…
I know what else you’re going to ask: how come you can’t view videos at all – or other embeds in our articles, such as those from Reddit or Twitter – without enabling targeting cookies?
Current internet privacy regulations, in Europe and elsewhere, are very broad in the way they define the kind of targeting cookies that users must agree to before they are served by a website. Our interpretation of the regulations is that they include cookies not only served by us, but by third parties through our website – such as YouTube, when we embed a YouTube video on a page. It is fair to say that not all websites interpret the regulations the same way we do, but the potential financial penalties for not conforming to them are enormous, and so we are taking a very cautious approach. This is why we ask you to agree to cookies before allowing you to view embeds.