What is clickbait?

Clickbait is a headline that deliberately exaggerates in order to win higher traffic and, with it, higher advertising revenue, by playing on the curiosity of readers. An exciting headline suggests an interesting and revealing article. Once you click through and start reading, the substance is usually thin and unremarkable.

Typical signs of clickbait

Clickbait headlines often lean on call-to-action phrasing, expressions such as “don’t miss this” or “you need to know this”. Other typical signs are superlatives, cliffhangers and strong adjectives or keywords. Topics that are emotionally charged also produce higher click numbers.

Criticism of clickbaiting

Because there is very little informative value behind most clickbait, the method is often criticized, and serious journalists and websites keep moving away from the practices described above.

Despite the fair criticism, clickbait remains an interesting topic in online marketing, because for anyone who depends on high click numbers on their website, clickbaiting is a relatively simple and fast solution. Even so, it is worth keeping in mind that the quality of the website suffers and that critical target audiences are partly put off by it. Some social media platforms such as Facebook already work against it with a changed algorithm, so that clickbait articles are kept out of the news feed.