If you’re a regular reader of car websites you’ve probably experienced the increase in advertising bloat, ranging from annoying pop-ups to random ads every other paragraph. I hope, as the Publisher of this site, your experience is a lot better and you’re not seeing a lot of ads and your reading experience is fairly uninterrupted. Our theory behind all this is that, by offering something that looks and works better, we’ll get you to read more and, therefore, we don’t have to make every page look like a mood board created by a teenager who really loves motor oil. In that vein, we’re launching a video player that you will see in the body of every article (it will run our videos with ads in-between and audio off), but we’re going to try to do it differently than everyone else. It’s why I’m excited to announce AUTOPIAN TV.
This won’t be a surprise to members, who got a preview of what we were doing last month and even helped us pick how it would look. I’ll try to summarize what we’re doing and why because we believe transparency is important. This isn’t just a car website, it’s a community, and communities require open communication and trust.
Ok first, and most obviously, here’s what it looks like right now:
Jason designed that. I hope you think it’s sleek. I hope it loads for you and works well without bogging down your browser. I hope it doesn’t follow you around the page like these things tend to on other sites.
What You Can Expect From AUTOPIAN TV
Our goal is to put up as many original video pieces as we can, but we’re a small outfit that mostly shares a video team with Galpin Media, so we’re going to start small with one to three new feature-length videos a week. These will include:
- AUTOPIAN DRIVES: This is what the screengrab above is from. As the name suggests, we drive things. Sometimes it’ll be Torch. Or David. Or Beau. Or Mercedes. Or everyone. Sometimes it’ll be a new car, often it’ll be something old and weird.
- PODCAST: It’s the podcast!
- SECRET NEW SHOW: David’s been working on a new show and we have a pilot and are about to start shooting new episodes. This will roll out soon.
Additionally, we’ve gotten feedback that many of you don’t like the embedded Instagram player (which is how we share reels). Don’t worry, we can also put these videos up in this new player, and it’s a way easier/better experience. This doesn’t mean we’ll stop posting to our YouTube channel or to our Instagram account, it just means that we want to make our on-page experience more sustainable.
Why Are We Doing This?
Is this about advertising? Absolutely. 100%. Because we have membership (sign up!) we get to avoid doing all sorts of things we don’t want to do; we’re grateful for that. Still, we don’t think membership alone is quite enough to keep us going long-term (yet!) unless we instituted a paywall (like you see on other sites or Substack). Since we’d like to reach as many people as possible, we don’t want to restrict what we regularly do to just members. Car culture is for everyone, after all. It’s a tough balance but, in the end, we want to give you more for being a member without subtracting from what a non-member sees.
We also want to make doing video sustainable and, frankly, it seems that YouTube may not be the platform do that on anymore.
Almost all of our car-blog colleagues use so-called “white label” players that work kind of like YouTube, but these players do a lot of annoying things:
- Autoplay sound, which is something we want to never do.
- Become a “sticky player” that pops up on the sidebar and never leaves, which we don’t like.
- Run way too many ads.
- Show content from other publishers that isn’t vetted.
The reasoning behind these annoyances are purely practical: You can show people more ads and guarantee nearly 100% viewability of those ads. Advertisers love it. Chief Revenue Officers love it. I’m pretty sure no readers love it.
Thankfully, we found a company that offers a high quality and useful one of these players that will allow us to do none of the above. It’ll mean less money for us, likely, but our theory on all of this has been that it’ll all even out because people will choose to watch our videos as opposed to being forced to watch them. And part of the reason we want to have membership is so that we’re not cornered into wallpapering the site with ads.
Will this all magically work with no issues at first? Almost certainly not. We spend the vast majority of our money on staff and not technology, which probably shows sometimes. We’ve been testing this and think it should work fairly well. We will absolutely be surprised by some things, so we just ask for your patience and, more importantly, to please let us know when something doesn’t work the way you think it should. My email is right here.
Our video partner understands what we’re trying to do and has been pretty flexible with letting us try to do this our way. I’m hopeful we’re a success not just because it might help us become more sustainable, but also because I want us to show that there’s a way to run a sustainable website in 2023 that doesn’t require making that website entirely unreadable. I could be wrong, but I hope I’m not.
The first new AUTOPIAN TV video will be up today and I can’t wait for you to see it!
Can we not do autoplay? It’s really disappointing to need to hit pause on every single article now. Yuck.
Adding my note to the chorus that this is an astonishingly refreshing way to approach running a website. I’d also like to say that 1-3 videos/week sounds like…a lot? I don’t think I’m the only one who’d suggest y’all should do Quality over Quantity.
Videos autoplay for me though which is not my favourite. Firefox; uBlock Origin whitelisted.
I saw nothing until I turned off AdBlock. Since it’s you, I’ll unlock the door. There’s beer and frozen pizza in the fridge.
Huh—I’m not seeing the player, either. Using Firefox with, yes, uBlock Origin doing uBlock Origin things. Is there an exception I should add to make it work?
You should whitelist us, ideally. All of these videos will be on YouTube and Insta, though.
It appears with it uBlock turned off, so no worries. I’ve just been browsing, er, let’s call them websites that reek of herb and figured I should see if the new player comes through as a native part of the Autopian’s website. So many users come in with adblockers set to stun because of those other places, so I figured it’d be a helpful thing to note.
FWIW the video player currently makes it past my Pi-Hole. Good stuff.
Correct you can push response mrate as opposed to forced watch rate. Soon enough the bean counters will trace lack of sales and shut the force feed down. But I still can’t play a video and hear it even the ones I want to see. But an idea. For non members read an article or two require watch a video. Let them pick and maybe buy.
did I miss the link or is it not live yet?
There’s no link, it shows up in every story. We should probably make a little button that takes you to a player that just shows all our videos, though.
U-Block Origin also seems to be blocking the video player. This was a good reminder for me to whitelist the Autopian. Thanks for the transparency and the communication!
Update, the video player isn’t showing the total run time and seemed to just abruptly end a video about the motor home and play the next one. I’m unsure if that was just a short clip or the player timing out.
In theory, there are two kinds of video experiences:
I will see if I can find the link, the button for ATV would be excellent. Add taillights to fits Jason’s general theme 🙂
David should be happy that the Youtube algorithim loaded a grammarly ad.
Eethur dat/ oar migh grammer pluss spelling suk;
FYI the video player does not load in Brave browser. That is not Autopian’s fault, it’s just Brave doing its job. The interesting thing is that there is not even a placeholder of some kind (like an icon or text) to indicate the missing video for anyone who might be interested — the article just goes from one paragraph to the next. So I imagine that part is something that Autopian can remedy on your end.
Good question! Possibly… not? I’ll ask tech.
IDK if I’m the minority or not, but when I come across a paywall, a full page ad, an autoplay video with sound or anything that scrolls with me unless you find the worlds tiniest X to get out of it, I just leave. There is nothing I want to read so badly that I will put up with that, especially when countless sites all report on the same stuff. If I wanna check out the new Samsung Galaxy on launch day, and I click on a review that starts playing a video or blocks the page with an ad begging me to to sign up for a mailing list, I just get out of it and find another site.
First off, I echo the other comments here praising the Autopian’s approach, transparency, and respect for the user. There’s a reason this is the one and only website to which I subscribe.
Now for some (hopefully) constructive feedback on the video player – I’m watching the Lotus review with David and Beau.
1) I would like to watch the video full screen, but I see no control to do that.
2) I would like to adjust the volume, but it looks like the video is fixed volume and I’d need to change my system volume setting instead (not a dealbreaker, but it is functionality I’d appreciate)
3) When I click ‘watch more’ it just opens a new tab in my browser of the same article (I assume that’s because it is the only video feature article so far?)
a) The ‘watch more’ arrow at the bottom of the frame seems like it never disappears, and since I don’t have the option to go full screen (1) it is continuously masking a bit of the bottom of the video. Could it be made to fade to black after the first ~30 seconds or so, and re-appear upon mouseover? Or, once again, just let me go full screen, please.
Otherwise, so far so good! Please let me know if any of the above are ‘problem exists between desk and chair’ failures to understand the controls on my part.
You nailed a bunch of stuff that is an issue.
Thanks for the fast follow-up, and yay full screen!
Final bug report for today – when watching the video in the player, once you get to about ~3 minutes left in the video, it auto-skips to the next video in the queue, in my case Mercedes driving the locomotive. It seems that if you skip past that trigger point, you can watch the last part of the video, but if the ‘next video’ triggers, it is a one-way trip, there’s no way to continue watching the video you’re on.
I hope these bug reports are a help and not a distraction. I want this to be a success and help The Autopian be a viable business!
I see the same auto-skip behavior, even after opening the Lotus video in fullscreen on desktop (Firefox, MacOS)
Super weird, I’m asking for a fix.
This is a big help, I have no idea what that’s happening!
Video can be a bear, I’ve been working on ad-based streaming video for 20 years [sobs into pillow]. I hope you guys can make some money after all the splits. I’ll be watching!
I clicked a Kotaku link yesterday forgetting it was G/O media and holy shit. I thought I was in an episode of black mirror.
I actually laughed out loud from the amount of pop-ups and shit floating around my screen. the article was completely unusable, there was a floating video ad, another embedded (both autoplaying with audio over one another) an email request pop-up, THREE ads floating in from the bottom, an ad between every paragraph, and the comments wouldn’t even load in because of the 50 ads at the bottom of the page. I am so glad I haven’t clicked on a lighting sight article in a long time cause it would’ve sent me into a blind rage.
Anywho, love y’all mean it. The transparency here is admirable. If my notifications ever start working again, I’ll be the happiest boy in the world.
Just like the Tatra T87, Autopian TV is streamlined, air-cooled, V8-powered and (allegedly) eliminates nazis…
Thank you for the transparency!
YouTube can be a place for sustainable video content, the problem is that your following there (and by extension, viewership) isn’t anywhere near large enough to generate a reasonable income. Unfortunately, the only way to be sustainable (for a larger production like this) is to be at 100,000+ views per video, even then that only roughly equates to $500CAD per video. It’s roughly $5 per 1000 views on average.
I’ve got a reasonably sized subscriber base but despite having over 10 million views overall I still haven’t made as much as I make a year working my regular job haha, it’s all a numbers game
I can’t root any harder for you to succeed than I already am, but if I could this would do it.
Also, as a point of anecdata I have absolutely bailed on web sites when they are too obnoxious with their ads. If you pop up multiple ads/subscribe to our newsletter/car execs hate this one weird trick screens when I visit your site I am leaving immediately. I don’t care if you’re literally the last source of some piece of information on the internet, I will do without rather than support you.
“Anecdata” is the best new word I’ve heard in awhile…thank you. I’m going to use it constantly at work now!
can i submit the twin turbo centurion vantruck for Autopian Drives
pleasepleaseplease
Hahah yes please! Where does this live?
I’m in Atlanta.
The last commissioning sea trial it still needs to complete is hitting up the Tail of the Dragon. I wouldn’t feel good writing a final build report for Autopian before that!
I look forward to Autopian TV, just need the link.
Future videos, tour of the writers collections. Maybe also a head to head competition.
One of the reasons I am a member and support this site is because of the way you try to handle things. Look, you’re supposed to make money at this venture and it’s not a charity. Hopefully most people get that. What drove us away from other sites, particularly the old lighting site, was the utter greed and lack of respect for the audience. Even when repeatedly warned there were certain hated things going on like stupid slide shows and loud audio on autoplay videos they ignored it and pressed on trying to earn the last 1/1000th of a cent from each click regardless of how it alienated the community.
I think as long as you continue to respect your community but also just as importantly your vision you’ll be successful. I will note I am here primarily for great writing and the community, and that trying to compete too hard on the video front will just put you up against every YouTuber out there. There is far too little great writing content on the net in general and I’m there for the people fighting the decline in writing quality.
I see you didn’t go with the recommended down-under version for the bottom line LOL
Not yet, but the way this works we can do some fun easter eggs in the future. But better safe-than-sorry!
NO bell sound after clearing the cache!!
Nice!
I came to the article with a bit of hope they’d do it. Still looks good without.
The transparency between the site and it’s users has been, frankly, pretty amazing. I appreciate these explainers.
This is how you rollout ads and a video player. And thank you, so freaking much, for not doing auto-sound. That’s sort of a deal-breaker for me…
Also, secret new show!?
The acronym is TiT. I’ll let you figure it out.
Tracy in Tibet
Tracy in Tinseltown?
Tracy in Transmissions – Torch uses his Apple II controlled shrink-ray to shrink David to a size that’s ideal for crawling around engine bays and identifying causes of transmission failures.
Tracy in Torrance – David moves to a large house in Torrance to deal with his expanding cat adoption addiction.
Tracy is Trippin’ – Either a show where David is hotly contesting or defending something (in an uncharacteristically angry tone), or a show where the viewer guesses what drug David is on, but it always ends up being symptoms of tetanus.
You guys probably shouldn’t hire me.
Alternative format for Tracy is Trippin’: David tries various drugs and converses with Jason. Eventually, we hope to replicate Jason’s particular altered consciousness. It might be impossible!
Okay, maybe we don’t need a temporary additional Jason, but science deserves to know if we can create one.
Success is measured by how frequently David employs a chainsaw for future wrenching.
This is Trucking, the new show reviewing various freight-hauling setups and giving people a peek into truck-driving careers.
David goes to a strip club?
Truth in Tetanus, a show searching for and exploring the hidden potential in rusty wrecks anyone else would doom to the scrapyard.
Huh huh, that means “boobie.”
My bet’s on “Taillights in Trouble.”
The show is obviously a cat rescue show. It’ll be named something like Mr. Tracy’s Catopian Chronicles
Is this the promised “pivot to video?”
LOL, yes.
Honestly, fuck that. I’m sorry for the rudeness.
If i want video content, i’ll go youtube, you can even ask us to subscribe, i’ll do ut with pleasure, but i choose what i want to see and when.
I come here to read amazing pieces, keyword : READ.
Fuck “pivot to video”
{ reaches for knives }
Sorry, that’s a default response whenever I hear those words.
It looks like the logic of how it chooses videos isn’t quite functional yet (which makes sense, it just started reading data) so I’m guessing you’ll see similar videos for a while.
This is why I’m a member. I want this site to keep going because I love it here. It’s my go to site when I have a moment to myself. I appreciate your transparency about how you guys plan on accomplishing the sustainability of the site.
I have adblocker turned on for every other site I visit because like you said it’s an incredibly awful experience that makes websites unreadable. I turn off the adblocker for this site because the ads aren’t that intrusive and they thankfully don’t autoplay sound. I’m so happy for the continued growth and can’t wait to see what the future holds.
I’ll also echo JaredTheGeek and say that the Lotus video was great.
I too really appreciate the transparency & honesty that’s been an autopian hallmark from the beginning.
Everyone is sick of companies who tell us “we’re doing <insert annoying thing here> to serve you better!”, as we know it’s a lie.
Much better if they’d just say “look, here’s the reason why…” and treat people like adults capable of understanding real world trade-offs. Like this site does!
I have been enjoying the videos already produced. The last one with David and Beau in the Lotus was great. Can’t wait to see what else is coming. Hopefully with the new hires this means that we will get another video series of David suffering to put a car together to go on some epic journey. Maybe back to his Jeep roots.
This is the way! Thank you for giving careful consideration into what makes other sites too annoying to deal with, and going against the herd. Innovation like this with regards to what viewers actually want is a breath of fresh air on the internets.
What Taco said.
It feels like you’re listening to us, and that goes a long way. It’s easy to say, “Not like the Old Site”, but specifically what should be included or not matters. I guess I’m saying that I appreciate having a say here.