We create videos for our clients, edit videos they've created or had created for them, and we use their videos straight as provided. We often find ourselves using a custom video player or use the YouTube video with the branding turned off. There are several reasons with the top two being increased search engine optimization or SEO and also to relieve the burden from your web server streaming the video. This not only will make your website faster but provide a better user experience.
So how do we remove YouTube's branding using their standard and not using a "hack" to achieve the same result? You could use a custom video player but we're going to show you the easiest way of using the standard YouTube video player.
Let's look at the main reasons why a business would want to remove the YouTube branding:
- They want the video to appear native to the website
- Don't want to be associated with YouTube
With all the reasons why you wouldn't want the branding why would you want your video on YouTube rather than hosting it on your website?
- YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Internet (SEO benefit)
- Takes away from your web server
- Makes your website faster (based on YouTube is serving the video)
How to remove YouTube's logo from embedded videos & players
The change is rather simple to remove the YouTube branding. A word of advice is this needs to be the very first parameter to make it work. What you will do is add ?modestbranding=1. An example to make this happen is:
Below is the video above with the ?modestbranding=1 turned on.
The first parameter after the video ID needs to be a question mark (e.g. ?) and all subsequent parameters you use need to use an ampersand (e.g. &). You will see that right after are video ID (e.g. qUy8OCTae3o) we added the ?modestbranding=1 which tells the player to no longer show the YouTube branding.
Other YouTube modifications
Although we've talked about the removal of branding there are also some other options you can use. Below are all of the parameters we've used in the past. For the complete list of additional parameters, you can go to https://developers.google.com/youtube/player_parameters.
- Turn off Title & Ratings – &showinfo=0
- Turn off Search – &showsearch=0
- Turn on Related Videos – &rel=1
- Note: This is one that we always use at the end but usually with &rel=0 so that no video recommendations are given. Video recommendations that are given are related to what the user is interested in and not necessarily specific to the company.
- Note 2: If you are using a playlist then you should leave this as &rel=1.
- Turn off Annotations – &iv_load_policy=3
- Force Closed Captions – &cc_load_policy=1
- Turn on AutoPlay (not recommended) – &autoplay=1
- Loop Playback – &loop=1
- Remove Full-Screen Option (not sure why you'd want to) – &fs=0
- Set Start/End time – &start=&end=
- The number you use needs to be a whole number (e.g. 1, 2, 3). If you want your video to start at 1 minute and fifteen seconds you would type in 75 (60 seconds + 15 seconds) for the start time. IF you wish it to end after two and a half minutes you would enter in 150 (60 seconds + 60 seconds + 30 seconds)
Conclusion
Videos are an important part of your marketing or should be. They convey your information quickly, easily, and provide information to your site visitors in a consistent voice. How you display your video to get your positive word out there is equally important. Choose the video player that aligns with your business branding.