Shortly after the announcement that YouTube would be offering merch annotations and associated website annotations, another salvo was being fired for a test just in time for the holiday shopping season.  There are currently videos in which a viewer may click on a somewhat unobtrusive box (annotation) and be whisked away to a specific page with the product they want ready to purchase, as one can now do with website annotations.  It’s pretty much a “buy this now” button for YouTube videos.  While we’ve seen some instances of these new annotations in place, this is the first time we’ve seen a video like the following that is clearly using these annotations to create an interactive, shoppable video ad, with more than one link to one website.

However, with these interactive shopping videos, the new challenge for 2013 for similar retail brands may be: how do I make an interactive video without being annoying?
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written by Chris Atkinson