[ub99]

The auto playing videos that are not related to the content of the article are, perhaps, the most baffling thing for me. I open an article and watch a video for a minute trying to understand the point - to only then realize that the video is unrelated. What’s the point of this? In most cases I close the website and add it to my blocklist.

[rchaud]

The videos usually have unskippable ads.

[ub99]

Oh I see. My ad blocker seems to block all those video ads pretty effectively!

Even then, why would they not just run video ads in that spot? What is the point of trying to distract the user from the content of the article? Just feels weird to me.

[rchaud]

I've mostly seen autoplaying ads on "blog" sites like Forbes and Huffington Post or news websites. These are known as 'content mills' because they either reprint Associated Press/Reuters coverage, or they publish articles from freelance contributors. It's a bottomless pit of generic content.

Front-load every article with an autoplaying video w/ ads, and that can make some decent revenue if your site has a lot of traffic.

[exciteabletom]

> What is the point of trying to distract the user from the content of the article?

The article is merely bait to get you to look at the ads. Once you are on the page, they don't care whether or not you read the article.

[Breza]

And video ads carry much higher per-user prices then display ads. Especially if the whole ad finishes playing or you accidentally click on the ad when trying to close it.

[daveoc64]

They can play an ad before and after the video, and often the video itself is some sort of sponsored content.