Cape Town - Clickbait will continue evolve as advertisers increasingly target desperate methods to lure internet users, says an industry expert.
Clickbait is widely regarded as the lowest form of marketing, and uses catchy headlines to essentially "bait" people into clicking on links.
"I think it will just evolve, as clickbait has existed for well over 100 years in the newspaper environment to up circulation," Andre Steenkamp told Fin24.
Steenkamp has more than two decades of marketing experience and runs the 25AM digital agency in Cape Town.
He said that clickbait evolved from the newspaper industry using headlines in a circulation battle, known at the time as Yellow Journalism. Typically, papers would publish provocative headlines or cartoons to convince people to buy the day's print edition.
User experience
But as people migrated online, the demand for eyeballs forced some marketers to turn to clickbait methods.
"Clickbait methods appeal to some marketers as it will show higher than average CTRs [click through rates], but if you look at the context of the consumer experience the expectation is generally not met with results of the click and this results in a poor user experience, brand and product association," Steenkamp said.
Indeed, as people increasingly use mobile devices, clickbait has already followed its audience and Steenkamp suggested that these strategies would serve to harm the user experience.
"Invasive mobile strategies are dangerous in my opinion as it makes for a poor user experience and even though this may increase the amount of unique users for the short term, it does not retain users. Instead, it creates a conscientious blacklist of the site or product."
Watch as Andre Steenkamp explains why clickbait is trickery:
In a Ted Talk Sally Kohn, CEO of think tank Movement Vision Lab, said that the cluttered internet landscape is leading to increasingly degrading comment to drive attention on social media, among other things.
"In an increasingly noisy media landscape, the incentive is to make more noise to be heard. And that tyranny of the loud encourages the tyranny of the nasty."
There are signs that internet users are becoming numb to clickbait.
Clickbait links
In 2012 Google found that 79% of internet users would return to the search page if the mobile site used clickbait techniques or displayed irrelevant information.
Steenkamp said that clickbait would ultimately evolve to engage audience appetites.
"As audience numbers drop - because people are going to get tired of all these sensational headlines - it will just use another form, whatever that might be."
Facebook recently changed the giant social network to block many of the clickbait links that proliferated the site and even perennial clickbaiter Buzzfeed has also made moves to reduce the incidence on its website.
Steenkamp warned that the structure of the digital advertising industry needs to change.
"Advertisers, especially those in the mobile search space, need to reassess the importance of reporting on 'page impressions' alone and instead focus their efforts on the time each visitor spends on site and if such engagement led to a sale/share. This is actually a truer indication of the quality of all your digital marketing efforts. It is one thing to drive traffic to a site, but how valuable is that visit?"
Watch this video of Andre Steenkamp discussing how clickbait will evolve:
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