YouTube to shelve video responses due to extremely low click-through rate

If you can't remember that last time you watched a YouTube video response, you're not the only one. As it turns out, only four out of every one million users who see a video response actually click on it, something that works out to a click-through rate of 0.0004%. Because of this, YouTube has announced that the feature will go away next month.

The feature will fade away on September 12, and in its place YouTube promises that better tools will be developed for creators to draw an audience. In case you haven't even noticed the existence of video responses lately, that's perhaps because they're found farther down the page than they used to be, now nestled between comments.

Regardless, the absence of the feature isn't likely to upset many if the click-through rate is any indication. YouTube is encouraging its users to continue to create video responses, however — they'll just need to be named in such a way that they can be discovered through search, such as "Video Response to XYZ," something many users already do.

Users are also told that video responses they've made thus far will still remain, just will no longer show up beneath the video towards which it was created. There's no mention of what kind of features YouTube plans to launch in the place of this feature, but we'll let you know what they're up to when we hear more.

SOURCE: YouTube