Background

Used to lure viewers into content which is slightly different to what they desired it to be, clickbait is a form of false advertising. Click baiting has been around since the internet began, with a pop-up advert to misleading articles, disappointment always prevails. The positive side, Clickbaiting can bring a much larger click ratio on the desired content, if your end goal is to disregard content overviews, then it may be the perfect media asset for your company.

Types of Media Platforms

Clickbait can form across all media platforms on the internet, from Youtube videos to Facebook articles, no doubt you’ve clicked on one of these, hoping to be thrilled and entertained as the title so promptly explains. However, you can’t stop Clickbait, humans as a species are too curious not to want to view blatantly “fake news”

Why would you want to use Clickbait?

The most impressional people on the internet are young people, aged 15 under. When they see bright colours, big arrows, shocked faces, and large text. They instantly click, it’s exciting and amazing. Most of these obnoxious thumbnails occur of Youtube, getting millions of views, for in essence very little quality of content. That’s not to say the content is bad itself, but its sole purpose is to lie to its audience, which makes the content worse in the audiences eye.

Evaluating forms of clickbait

Infamous for using clickbait headlines, Buzzfeed is the market leader of clickbait articles, pictured is an article on “Guy Fieri without his trademark hair will forever change you”. Realistically it won’t, it’s mildly interesting as best, I haven’t felt any different at all. Their sole aim is to attract clicks to their site. This means they have free range to say or do anything in order to keep the ‘site view time’ up. Which is what advertisers on their site are paying for, they want people to be on their site as long as possible. Ultimately, they couldn’t care less about the quality of content.

Youtube Star ‘Ali-A’ aka Alastair Aiken has mastered the art of the clickbait thumbnail for his Youtube gaming videos. Games such as ‘Fortnite’ and ‘Call of Duty’. His thumbnails are filled with explosive colours and exaggerated expressions to show off how impressive the video’s outcome will be. Bold text and emojis add to the element of excitement he wants to display. Credit where credit is due, it works. Ali-A’s videos average millions of views, as a testament to his method of clickbait.