So, what thumbnail do you suggest? Can you post a thumbnail with your ideal design in mind?
The point of a thumbnail is to attract viewers to your video, among the sea of millions of other videos that get posted every day. How do you propose they do that?
I would generally suggest using thumbnails that don’t provoke clicking through annoyance. Anything involving heavily edited human faces, stupid expressions, text that could be inferred from the title, or the classic huge red arrows, is in my opinion either trying to appeal to children or get people annoyed enough to click to see what the video is about.
Source - have spent way, way too much time on YouTube. PS do yourself a favour and install dearrow.
YouTube even allows A/B testing for thumbnails now so creators can know with far more certainty what style of thumbnail generates more clicks. I’ve even observed the A/B testing occuring as I’ve scrolled past a new video mentally marking it to watch later then later seen the same video with a different thumbnail
This is true, but it doesn’t change the facts that the channels with good content, which is highly subjective, also want to maximise the viewership.
Think of it like this, there is a subset of people that will click the video based on whether the title seems interesting and don’t care about the thumbnail; these people are always going to click. Then there is a subset who need these kind of thumbnails to drive clicks to their channel.
You can go and find countless YouTubers discussing this topic and how it really does affect the metrics of the channel. Do I like these thumbnails? Not really. Do they annoy me in anyway ? Not really. I care about the content and everything else is just superficial noise.
I reckon if you’re stupid enough to click a thumbnail like that, you’re going to get scammed at some point anyway
Lol damn… yeah those thumbnails are pretty insufferable
Unironically, I have an estension to fix them. (Replaces thumbnails with a random video frame.)
DeArrow?
That’s it. There is also clickbait remover iirc, I used before but switched for some reason I don’t remember.
That thumbnail is for the video exposing honey.
Precisely the thumbnail that would prevent you from getting scammed.
But… ya, that is the worst possible style of thumbnail regardless.
So, what thumbnail do you suggest? Can you post a thumbnail with your ideal design in mind?
The point of a thumbnail is to attract viewers to your video, among the sea of millions of other videos that get posted every day. How do you propose they do that?
I would generally suggest using thumbnails that don’t provoke clicking through annoyance. Anything involving heavily edited human faces, stupid expressions, text that could be inferred from the title, or the classic huge red arrows, is in my opinion either trying to appeal to children or get people annoyed enough to click to see what the video is about.
Source - have spent way, way too much time on YouTube. PS do yourself a favour and install dearrow.
Highlighting the influencers who are pushing this garbage is important as part of the thumbnail, and the best way to do that is to show their faces.
YouTubers seem to experiment with thumbnails and the fact is that more people click these type of thumbnails compared to more traditional ones.
YouTube even allows A/B testing for thumbnails now so creators can know with far more certainty what style of thumbnail generates more clicks. I’ve even observed the A/B testing occuring as I’ve scrolled past a new video mentally marking it to watch later then later seen the same video with a different thumbnail
Mr Beast gets lots of views, yet it could be argued all of his content is garbage - getting views is not at all an indicator of quality.
This is true, but it doesn’t change the facts that the channels with good content, which is highly subjective, also want to maximise the viewership.
Think of it like this, there is a subset of people that will click the video based on whether the title seems interesting and don’t care about the thumbnail; these people are always going to click. Then there is a subset who need these kind of thumbnails to drive clicks to their channel.
You can go and find countless YouTubers discussing this topic and how it really does affect the metrics of the channel. Do I like these thumbnails? Not really. Do they annoy me in anyway ? Not really. I care about the content and everything else is just superficial noise.