Why do youtubers have intros?

[Hawick]

Just why? I'm not talking about the minute long cringefest intros. Even the shorter ones like 5-10 sec ones are annoying. Why the eff do all youtubers feel the need to put a goddamn intros in their videos? Just cut to the chase, no one cares about the intro. 

 

Just asking.

[jiyeon]

It's to establish their personality and get an iconic start to a video, whether that be an animation or a "Hey guys" intro. You remember them better that way.

[Andreas Lilja]

To remember their channel's name?

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I don't mind the 5-10 second ones; it's the ones that last longer than that are the ones that annoy the snot out of me. Them and the ones wtth loud music (or whatever they call it) at the beginning. Then there are the ones with no narration but play really loud music with an even louder beat throughout the video. 

[avxw]

I guess it's for the same reason TV shows have intros, to establish a theme and introduce you to the video.

[DarkShame2]

It also helps build up fanbase/subs if they like/enjoy the content for them.

[minibois]

What others said are the main reasons. Mainly recognition and basic 'introduction' type stuff.

 

Personally I have a habit of pressing 'L' a couple of times with any YouTube video, because I have found that usually skips the intros, ad integrations, background (which I often don't need) and just gets me into the video right away 

[Hawick]

On 7/26/2019 at 7:20 AM, Minibois said:

What others said are the main reasons. Mainly recognition and basic 'introduction' type stuff.

 

Personally I have a habit of pressing 'L' a couple of times with any YouTube video, because I have found that usually skips the intros, ad integrations, background (which I often don't need) and just gets me into the video right away 

Lol I gotta try that.

[RoseLuck462]

I like intros 

[Arika]

i will say it gets boring to see every other person using an after effects intro (which all look like they followed the same tutorial) with dubstep playing in the background

[mariushm]

It's an easy way to pad the video with 30s of non-content. Sometimes you need to get over the 10 minute mark in order to get ads and monetization on the video.

 

It can help to create an artificial separation between the ads Youtube plays before the video, which the person may often skip, and bits like "This video was sponsored by SquareSpace or DollarShaveClub".... you have ads -> intro -> brief presentation about the video -> sponsored by -> content

It can help reduce friction, reduce annoyance, even if it's somewhat unconscious.

 

Historically, live streams and internet videos uses intros with less motion, credits, easy to compress stuff so that viewers would get a chance to preload a chunk of the video and reduce stuttering and interruptions... for example you had a 1 mbps internet connection and you watched a Real video stream at 300 kbps and the player would get a chance to buffer around 20-30 seconds of video while playing the intro that was compressed at 50-100 kbps

 

Nowadays it's mostly a branding thing and reinforcement thing like the Coca Cola ads - everybody knows about Coca Cola but they still run ads for it, to keep it fresh in people's memories. See GamersNexus' animation or Paul's Hardware "Awesome" bit at the beginning of each video... if you're subscribed, you know it's their videos by the intro.

 

To less of a degree it can also help as a deterrent, or some automated copy protection ... for example Steve from GamersNexus could insert that intro bit into Youtube's ContentID and be notified automatically every time someone uploads a video with that intro bit.  This way, he could quickly report people that simply download his content and reupload it on their channels, without any modifications.

 

 

[Teddy07]

Intros are so annoying and I always skip them

[TetraSky]

To make it slightly more annoying for content robbers. When they steal your videos, they have to get rid of the intro, especially if it says your channel's name in it.

[dalekphalm]

On 7/25/2019 at 6:45 PM, Hawick said:

Just why? I'm not talking about the minute long cringefest intros. Even the shorter ones like 5-10 sec ones are annoying. Why the eff do all youtubers feel the need to put a goddamn intros in their videos? Just cut to the chase, no one cares about the intro. 

 

Just asking.

One simple reason: Branding.

 

Intros aren't for you - the long term viewer. They're for every person who gets served that video via the algorithm, and has never seen that creator before.

[Guest]

So people can submit new animations to get notoriety in LWIAY. 

[RockyRZ]

Because their intros suck. If it's a good intro, like Jackfilm's, then you won't complain.

 

If it sucks or lasts too long, then they're amateurs.