Quick blog post, a divine inspiration struck me. I just want to gush for a moment about a newer YouTube feature that did NOT exist back when my videos were popping off.
You are now able to run a “thumbnail test” on your videos where you try out three different thumbnails, and YouTube will randomly choose one to show to people and gauge their response to it.
I swear to god, I have been wrong every single time about which thumbnail is going to do well (except once).
I usually make three different thumbnails, generally derivative of one another, and load them in to see how they do.
What’s cool is that the test doesn’t just gauge how many people click your video, but also tests to see how long people end up watching your video and factors that into the test (watch time, as I understand, is generally more important to the algorithm than view count alone).
Not only do I genuinely feel like utilizing this feature has been improving my views etc, I also think it’s helping me to understand thumbnails better and see what works and what doesn’t.
Here are the three thumbnails I tested for my most recent video on Clair Obscur:
The third one ended up winning out even though I lazily slapped that one together in order to have a third one to test. I was sure the 1st or 2nd were gonna beat it out, but nope, number three came in at number one!
Like I said, quick post, but I love this feature and have utilized it on every single video I’ve posted since I started uploading again.
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