Does it has to be hard? I'd assume that's possible to do promotion without forcing people to watch the video, there's no much point in gaining viewers that are going to leave as soon as he/she stops bribing them, not much of a real audience.
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but it would be nice to think (if perhaps naive :) that if people watch a little they may like what they see and stick around for a while. Still I will probably do a mix of "GA in description", no GA, and Saucisse's suggestion and see how each works. Thanks.
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Having entered some of these, I can confirm that putting the link a couple of minutes into the video makes me more likely to watch it. Even though I initially just skip to where the annotation is, once the video has started there's some sort of psychological barrier breached and if the game being played interests me, I'll probably watch some/most/all of the video.
That said, I probably wouldn't watch them if not for the giveaways, even though they're pretty good videos, as LPs don't particularly interest me in general, so you're right that it's not a good way to build up a real audience.
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Cant you just post it in description ?
Also forcing people to watch your video just to get the link is ... interesting tactic to beg for views i guess .
Id just put it in the end like a normal person and let people decide if they want to watch it or not
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One option would be to feature only the 5-letter code in the video itself.
In this case, instead of https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Xx0XX/some-game you would write only Xx0XX, which has no meaning outside of SG and you wouldn't have to delete the video after the GA ends.
You could also turn this into a puzzle by hiding the code a bit. For example, break it up into 5 separate characters and feature them in different places of the video. Although this is guaranteed to antagonize some people because it would count as a puzzle and there are people who hate puzzles for some unfathomable reason :)
A simpler option would be to feature 4 characters of the code in the description while the 5th one would be found somewhere in the video. This way, you wouldn't need to edit the video at all to insert the GA code. You would only need to find one of the characters appearing in the video somewhere.
For example, you could write this in the description:
GA code: XxXx?, where ? is the first letter of the item name that is closest to the top of the screen at 6:22. (In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRK02RUOuZY, this letter would be L for "LARGE HEALTH KIT").
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In this case, instead of https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Xx0XX/some-game you would write only Xx0XX, which has no meaning outside of SG and you wouldn't have to delete the video after the GA ends.
Until someone who knows SG comes, see those letters, go to link and see it's expired. Year ago.
But it does limit number of people annoyed about the expired GA to only SG users.
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Include an end date along with the code, to reduce the level of annoyance from "Damn, I was given false hope and wasted some time typing in the code just to find out it's over!" to "Damn, looks like there was a promo here that I missed. Oh, well."
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Put obfuscated key in comments - means that only the fastest people have a chance at getting the key, I would prefer everyone had a decent chance. Still I have a few keys that apparently can not be put on SG, so I'll do this for them.
Instead of putting the key into the description, use the GA code. However, Saucisse's suggestion is the probably the best, since the video would still have to be watched.
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Over the past few months I have been creating private GAs and attaching the link as an annotation on my YouTube Let's Play videos. I thought it was a good way of giving away my spare keys, and the results were ok, each GA got about 30-100 entries, with an equivalent number of views on the video. Also, I got so good advice on making the LPs better.
However, Google is changing how YT works and removing the ability to add annotations to videos from next week, so my preferred method will no longer work. I have tried a few other ways, but none seem to work well. Perhaps this is the end of the line for such GAs? Or does a knowledgeable person here have another way of doing it?
Here are the ways I can think of and the associated problems:
Chroma Squad GA (level 2+)
Until Sunday the last few GA vids are:
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