• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 18, 2017

Modifying its service for an increasingly mobile world, YouTube is dropping its Annotations Editor.

In its place, Google’s video giant is offering End Screen and Cards -- mobile-centric tools that allow for linking, polling, and other functions.

The change is simply a reflection of shifting consumer preferences, according to Muli Salem, a product manager at YouTube.

Indeed, since YouTube first began rolling out adoption of End Screens and Cards, the use of annotations has decreased by over 70%, according to internal figures.

“With 60% of YouTube’s watch time now on mobile, why go through the work of creating annotations that won’t even reach the majority of your audience?” Salem asks in a new blog post. “End Screens and Cards work on mobile and desktop, giving you more bang for your buck.

End Screens and Cards generate seven times more clicks across YouTube than annotations, according to Salem.

“Viewers generally don’t love annotations, and on average, they close 12 annotations before they click on one of them,” she notes. “And more and more viewers turn off annotations altogether.”

On May 2, therefore, YouTube will no longer let users add new or edit existing annotations -- only delete them -- while existing annotations will continue to show when using a desktop computer.