Google YouTube Creator Playbook Guide Version 2 - Manual (Page 48)

Publishing & Optimization
Annotations are text overlays that you can place on YouTube videos.
There are numerous uses for annotations and producers are constantly
finding new, creative, and strategic ways to apply them to their videos.
48
Annotations
Annotations Use Cases
•
Supply additional information.
•
Act as a dynamic, editable text
layer.
•
Be used as navigational
elements. (to certain time-
code, or Next/Previous
episode)
•
Act as subscribe button within
the video.
Types of Annotations
•
You can customize many different
aspects of annotations including:
size, color, type, link, and timing of
annotations.
•
Different types of annotations are
useful for different needs and
strategies. Find what works best for
your videos.
•
Use spotlight annotations to make
areas within the video clickable.
•
Make areas of your video clickable or interactive.
•
Link the viewer to your channel page from within the video.
•
Ask specific questions to the audience to respond to in the
comments.
•
Encourage community activity such as ‘liking’ or ‘favoriting’ the
video.
•
Link to other content: videos, playlists, channels, full-versions.
•
Dynamically add content to your old videos.
•
You can customize many different aspects of annotations including:
size, color, type, link, and timing of annotations.
•
When a spotlight annotations is used, the text only appears when
the viewers hover over it with their mouse. Only a light outline of the
annotation is shown when the viewer does not hover over it. Using
this type can be a great way to include unobtrusive annotations that
are still easily clickable for the viewer.
•
Make annotations clickable and link to various places or actions on
YouTube. You can also set annotations to open a new window when
clicked, keeping the viewer from leaving the original video.