In May 2017, YouTube removed the annotations editor when it affected the use to drop by the astounding 70 percent. Now that new annotations have caused another significant issue among YouTube users, they’ve come to the same solution – to remove them, effective as of January 15, 2019.
We’re sure you all know about those annoying boxes that pop up every time you play any YouTube video. And we’re sure that many of you would rather play the radio that has to deal with these. Luckily for you, you won’t have to put up with these annotations for too long, since, as previously mentioned, they are set to disappear completely at the very beginning of the following year.
Even though we’re sure you’re all more than happy to hear this news, you should know that annotations, no matter how annoying, were, in fact, beneficial to some extent. For instance, when there was some mistake or a link stated in the video that was no longer relevant or just not working, annotations were the ones to correct those errors. So, now that they remove them, the mistakes will still be there, and they won’t be fixed.
So, as a substitute, creators are expected to embrace end screens and cards, which look a lot more professional, and, even more importantly, can work on mobile devices by default. In addition to that, cards can show image overlays, titles, as well as point viewers to a website or embed a poll for them to respond to it, while end screens will help creators promote other videos and encourage subscriptions.
According to Google, these can generate as much as seven times more clicks compared to annotations, which means a higher chance of engaging with a video’s audience. Whether you like it or not, be prepared for the big change and embrace it until they come up with something new.
Kim Marks 
Nicola Holder