To Auto-play or Not Auto-play?

It can be a tricky decision to go with, and at this point in the digital publishing game there is really no “best practice”, only options. 

Advertising agencies are taking several positions when it comes to advising their clients - Barry Lowenthal, president of The Media Kitchen, in Josh Sternberg’s article for Digiday http://digiday.com/publishers/the-most-hated-digital-ad-tactic/  describes it as a “cheap trick”, “annoying and intrusive” and encourages clients to never use it. Danielle Sporkin, senior manager of portfolio management at Universal McCann, in the same article is says that it’s not that simple: “What we once knew as online video is starting to expand, and there are so many opportunities where advertisers and publishers can place video. It becomes interesting as we navigate the video landscape because it’s ever expanding.”

Despite the momentum against the feature – it continues to pop up (automatically – in fact) across platforms. And Eric Blattberg argues that it is here to stay http://digiday.com/publishers/autoplay-video-beat-regular-video-sorry-guys/ , which Facebook, Bloomberg and IGN all incorporating the feature to various extents.

Paul Verna, senior analyst at eMarketer, a media research firm, says he is surprised there hasn’t been more of a backlash: “There have certainly been some bloggers and commenters who have railed against the default use of autoplay, but autoplay seems to be winning.”