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In a bid to add viewers and increase ad sales, YouTube will begin developing shows which utilize a new storytelling format: choose-your-own-adventure.
The world’s largest video website, which is a division of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, has used interactive advertisements in the past but has never made the leap into interactive programming with multiple storylines before because the technology did not exist.
Now, after other platforms like Netflix have developed interactive shows and proved the technology is up to the challenge, YouTube is going to try its hand at choose-your-own-adventure-style programming.
But it likely won’t want to use that phrasing unless it wants to get sued by the publisher of the Choose Your Own Adventure series, Chooseco, which filed suit against Netflix over its interactive Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.
The new initiative is being headed up by eight-year YouTube employee Ben Relles, who has been tasked with creating a new unit which will develop interactive programming as well as live specials.
“We now have amazing new tools and opportunities to create and tell multilayered and interactive stories,” said YouTube head of original programming Susanne Daniels. “Ben has an intuitive and experienced understanding of how the platform can enhance content, making him the perfect choice to develop this exciting new division.”
YouTube will be announcing a new slate of original programming at an event in New York City in a few weeks. More information should be available then – if the video platform chooses to release it.
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