If you’re highly annoyed with all the autoplaying videos that you’ve encountered on Facebook and YouTube, prepare to become even more irritated especially if you like visiting the Google Play Store. It seems like they will be introducing autoplaying promo videos in the Play Store listing, despite the fact that people have been pretty vocal about how much they hate things like that. They’re also telling developers to remove the ads in their promo videos as they may be “confusing for users.”
According to XDA Developers, you can see this latest news in the Google Play Console help section in the “graphic assets, screenshots, and video” page. The Promo Video part says that Google Play will start playing automatically the promo videos found in the store listing “to help more users discover your content at a glance”. Just like with the other auto-play videos in other platforms, it will play without sound unless you specifically turn it on.
One important thing to note here especially if you’re a developer is that if your promo video has an ad before it, you must turn it off because they don’t want users to be confused as to whether they’re watching an ad or seeing an actual app that they can download or buy on the Play Store. You will have until November 1 to disable this monetization with their promo videos or else they will not be shown on Google Play.
Discover is a huge problem for apps on the Play Store since there are millions of apps that people can choose from. Having your app’s promo video autoplay may be beneficial to your app or game, especially if people aren’t exactly sure what they’re looking for. They may not have to click on an app first to see what it’s all about. But then again, you might lose that segment of the market that doesn’t like these autoplaying videos.
Google Play Store will start having these autoplaying promo videos by September. Let us know if you’re seeing them and if you’re either ignoring them or it’s working for you.
