I have differing levels of sympathy for different jobs being eliminated by technology. Professional clickbait thumbnail designers? That's about as close to zero as I can imagine.
I have differing levels of sympathy for different jobs being eliminated by technology. Professional clickbait thumbnail designers? That's about as close to zero as I can imagine.
Probably not much. It’s not that much different from what happens today, where statistical models are used to analyze how each element of a thumbnail performs. It’s not a closed loop. The metric...
Probably not much. It’s not that much different from what happens today, where statistical models are used to analyze how each element of a thumbnail performs.
It’s not a closed loop. The metric by which thumbnails are measured is viewerships, which still depends on humans clicking the video for now.
...and viewership depends on algorithmic promotion. We already observe resonances like this, creating filter bubbles of disastrous consequences mostly involving anti-intellectualism. Using...
...and viewership depends on algorithmic promotion.
We already observe resonances like this, creating filter bubbles of disastrous consequences mostly involving anti-intellectualism. Using "better" models to both promote and create (if partially) content will only make it faster and more pronounced. E.g. the pipeline from zero to anti-vax will be hastened.
I can't blame them for doing what's best for their business, but I don't like the thumbnails I see on influencer videos. I like to see a frame from the actual video. For my own videos, though, I'm...
I can't blame them for doing what's best for their business, but I don't like the thumbnails I see on influencer videos. I like to see a frame from the actual video.
For my own videos, though, I'm playing accordion in my living room, so my videos all look the same. Sometimes I wonder if I should do something about that.
I think you CAN blame them for "doing what's best for business". Business and life are not two separate tracks. Everything someone does, whether for "what's best for business" or otherwise,...
Exemplary
I think you CAN blame them for "doing what's best for business". Business and life are not two separate tracks. Everything someone does, whether for "what's best for business" or otherwise, reflects on them. Making harmful decisions for the bottom line can and should be pointed out and criticized. We like to divide our lives into subsections, but the truth is that life is one single wild ride, and every action we take, every word we speak, paints a picture of us.
Sorry, this whole thing of "it's just business" has been on my mind a lot lately. You didn't say anything wrong in your post, it just put my thinking into motion about evil management and their excuses that "it's just business baby".
To focus in more on the thumbnail discussion, I think most creators' take on them are hackneyed at best and deceptively misleading at worst. It just isn't right to clickbait people. I don't care if it gets you more clicks, I think it's a bad quality about you if you're misleading people.
I want to end on a positive note and mention ThorHighHeels. They're a video game YouTuber who leans into the more niche, weird, eccentric, obtuse, etc. side of gaming. They are the only person I've found whose thumbnails are creative and visually striking. Would love to hear if anyone has examples of YouTubers doing creative or visually striking things with their thumbnails.
Also on your own videos, do you care to share? Would love to give feedback if you want it. I'd also enjoy listening/watching some of your vids. Are you doing original stuff or covers or?
One thumbnail style I really liked is the OG Tom Scott approach. It was very basic but still visually appealing (usually with a good photo related to the video's content in the background). At the...
They are the only person I've found whose thumbnails are creative and visually striking.
One thumbnail style I really liked is the OG Tom Scott approach. It was very basic but still visually appealing (usually with a good photo related to the video's content in the background). At the same time it was recognizable (in a brand identity sense), with the consistently styled red frame elememts serving a double-purpose as a category-indicator. He's since moved away from the latter, but the other points still apply.
Unfortunately that style seems to be an outlier rather than the norm. It's much more common to find surprised faces, arrows that remain unexplained even after you've watched the video, or even graphical elements that imply something's shown in the video that isn't. That's why I for one have 'cut my losses' so to say and have taken to replace thumbnails with video frames using browser plugins. I wish YouTube provided that option for users out of the box..
The Minecraft YouTubers are so bad at misleading thumbnails. They always show something that looks impossible or at least very difficult and then you watch the video and see they don’t actually...
The Minecraft YouTubers are so bad at misleading thumbnails. They always show something that looks impossible or at least very difficult and then you watch the video and see they don’t actually make the thing in the thumbnail.
Another commonality: anything more targeted towards or made by young women having a picture of the YouTuber with a worried expression on their face. I only noticed once I was looking up something...
Another commonality: anything more targeted towards or made by young women having a picture of the YouTuber with a worried expression on their face.
I only noticed once I was looking up something about Sims 4, and saw that there were a couple of big channels with young men in between all the young women.
And they all had thumbnails with themselves looking worried or concerned.
Then I started noticing that it is often how lots of female YouTubers in general make their thumbnails, and also male ones of they're doing makeup for example.
Not Just Bikes has a very similar color-based thumbnail strategy. https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes/videos Legend in the playlists: https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes/playlists
Not Just Bikes has a very similar color-based thumbnail strategy.
Yes! They do have some really good ones. Ty for the suggestion. The thumbnail for their video "Dangerous Playgrounds; Learning vs. Design" made me gasp at how absurd it is. I added that one to my...
Yes! They do have some really good ones. Ty for the suggestion. The thumbnail for their video "Dangerous Playgrounds; Learning vs. Design" made me gasp at how absurd it is. I added that one to my watchlist lol.
I think they're open to criticism (and I did criticize) but a misleading thumbnail doesn't seem so bad. I mean, have you heard about Rickrolling? I play old songs and covers on accordion. Here's...
I think they're open to criticism (and I did criticize) but a misleading thumbnail doesn't seem so bad. I mean, have you heard about Rickrolling?
This is basically home videos, though, and I like it that way. A bigger audience wouldn't do me any good, and I'm unlikely to do to do anything that makes recording more work than it already is.
I mean, misleading thumbnails and clickbait titles aren't like the worst thing ever, but I do think they're scummy and say something about you if you're using them to profit. Rickrolling is like...
I mean, misleading thumbnails and clickbait titles aren't like the worst thing ever, but I do think they're scummy and say something about you if you're using them to profit.
Rickrolling is like sitting on a whoopee cushion, it doesn't count.
And I love the songs "La Vie en Rose" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" so it was fun to watch those covers. thanks for sharing!!
I agree with you, and further, even if we count it, rickrolling got tired fast as well. Just as whoopee cushions would if they were being used constantly and every time you clicked a video you...
I agree with you, and further, even if we count it, rickrolling got tired fast as well. Just as whoopee cushions would if they were being used constantly and every time you clicked a video you wanted to watch it ended up being whoopee cushions. I would prefer skybrian's type of thumbnail. Clickbait thumbnails are tedious and unimaginative and a massive waste of viewers' time. They're not about advertising content, they're about hiding that there is none. Skybrian's are minimalist. WYSIWYG in thumbnail form. He could jazz it up in non-clickbaity ways such as different hats as someone suggested, but if that's not how personality, then there's no real reason to do so, because the people looking for content like his would know they've found it.
If someone makes a living and puts a roof over their head with a clickbait thumbnail, I'm not going to judge them for it anymore than I judge the poor retail employee who has to do a half-hearted...
If someone makes a living and puts a roof over their head with a clickbait thumbnail, I'm not going to judge them for it anymore than I judge the poor retail employee who has to do a half-hearted pitch for a credit card.
It's not their fault the system requires them to do shitty things to put food on the table.
I'd prefer it if YouTube only allowed thumbnails captured from the video itself.
I don't understand that perspective. Yes, the stereotypical YouTuber 😱 thumbnails are awful, but do you want boon covers to just be a sentence or a paragraph from the book?
I don't understand that perspective. Yes, the stereotypical YouTuber 😱 thumbnails are awful, but do you want boon covers to just be a sentence or a paragraph from the book?
It's not a useful thumbnail because it's text. Text articles are best listed without any thumbnail at all, like in topic listings on Tildes. (Admittedly, a good headline isn't a quote from the...
It's not a useful thumbnail because it's text. Text articles are best listed without any thumbnail at all, like in topic listings on Tildes. (Admittedly, a good headline isn't a quote from the article, though.)
But a thumbnail of an photo should be the photo, possibly cropped. Also, when I browse a folder containing videos on my Mac, it shows little thumbnails that actually are frames from the video. It looks pretty good.
So why shouldn't that apply for videos on YouTube? They also have a title, which can be anything the author wants.
This is only indirectly related to the article, but I personally find clickbaity thumbnails extremely annoying wether they're created by a human or using generative ai, so I've started to employ...
This is only indirectly related to the article, but I personally find clickbaity thumbnails extremely annoying wether they're created by a human or using generative ai, so I've started to employ browser plugins such as this one to replace custom thumbnails with a frame from the actual video. Sometimes custom thumbnails can be informative and helpful, but most of the time removing them eliminates sooo much distracting and/or misleading clickbait that it's worth it imo. So my favourite solution would be to have this option as a native YouTube setting that users could enable. In a way this would also reduce the demand for thumbnail designers, but simply because the impact of thumbnails on a video's success will be non-existent for those with the 'frame-thumbnail' option enabled, hence making clickbait-oriented ai-thumbnail-generators less attractive as well.
I also use a similar plugin and it has made my experience with YouTube so much more enjoyable. At this point I don't know if I can go back to the way YouTube looks without it anymore. The few...
I also use a similar plugin and it has made my experience with YouTube so much more enjoyable. At this point I don't know if I can go back to the way YouTube looks without it anymore.
The few times that a custom thumbnail is actually useful is a downside, but it's just so rare nowadays. When I started using the plugin I had a separate browser without it as a comparison and there were only 2 videos over the month that a custom thumbnail was truly beneficial to the videos I was watching. I'll probably keep an eye on it every once in awhile just in case, but so far very happy.
Someone needs to explain how $10,000 is going into thumbnails. Take a picture vaguely related to the video. Slap on a red arrow and a picture of YouTube looking surprised. Bam done in 5 minutes.
Someone needs to explain how $10,000 is going into thumbnails. Take a picture vaguely related to the video. Slap on a red arrow and a picture of YouTube looking surprised.
The thumbnail is one of the most important parts of the video in terms of how many views it get. Because of the exponential nature of discovery on youtube, having a good thumbnail is incredibly...
The thumbnail is one of the most important parts of the video in terms of how many views it get. Because of the exponential nature of discovery on youtube, having a good thumbnail is incredibly important.
What looks like a haphazardly thrown together bunch of thumbnail stereotypes to you is actually an incredibly carefully curated and A/B tested image, with every element thoroughly market tested. That is, if you're on the big channels.
I have differing levels of sympathy for different jobs being eliminated by technology. Professional clickbait thumbnail designers? That's about as close to zero as I can imagine.
We've come full circle. The AI is now generating thumbnails that are optimized to be promoted by The Algorithm.
Surely no strange resonances will come out of that.
Probably not much. It’s not that much different from what happens today, where statistical models are used to analyze how each element of a thumbnail performs.
It’s not a closed loop. The metric by which thumbnails are measured is viewerships, which still depends on humans clicking the video for now.
...and viewership depends on algorithmic promotion.
We already observe resonances like this, creating filter bubbles of disastrous consequences mostly involving anti-intellectualism. Using "better" models to both promote and create (if partially) content will only make it faster and more pronounced. E.g. the pipeline from zero to anti-vax will be hastened.
I can't blame them for doing what's best for their business, but I don't like the thumbnails I see on influencer videos. I like to see a frame from the actual video.
For my own videos, though, I'm playing accordion in my living room, so my videos all look the same. Sometimes I wonder if I should do something about that.
Different hat each video.
I think you CAN blame them for "doing what's best for business". Business and life are not two separate tracks. Everything someone does, whether for "what's best for business" or otherwise, reflects on them. Making harmful decisions for the bottom line can and should be pointed out and criticized. We like to divide our lives into subsections, but the truth is that life is one single wild ride, and every action we take, every word we speak, paints a picture of us.
Sorry, this whole thing of "it's just business" has been on my mind a lot lately. You didn't say anything wrong in your post, it just put my thinking into motion about evil management and their excuses that "it's just business baby".
To focus in more on the thumbnail discussion, I think most creators' take on them are hackneyed at best and deceptively misleading at worst. It just isn't right to clickbait people. I don't care if it gets you more clicks, I think it's a bad quality about you if you're misleading people.
I want to end on a positive note and mention ThorHighHeels. They're a video game YouTuber who leans into the more niche, weird, eccentric, obtuse, etc. side of gaming. They are the only person I've found whose thumbnails are creative and visually striking. Would love to hear if anyone has examples of YouTubers doing creative or visually striking things with their thumbnails.
Also on your own videos, do you care to share? Would love to give feedback if you want it. I'd also enjoy listening/watching some of your vids. Are you doing original stuff or covers or?
One thumbnail style I really liked is the OG Tom Scott approach. It was very basic but still visually appealing (usually with a good photo related to the video's content in the background). At the same time it was recognizable (in a brand identity sense), with the consistently styled red frame elememts serving a double-purpose as a category-indicator. He's since moved away from the latter, but the other points still apply.
Unfortunately that style seems to be an outlier rather than the norm. It's much more common to find surprised faces, arrows that remain unexplained even after you've watched the video, or even graphical elements that imply something's shown in the video that isn't. That's why I for one have 'cut my losses' so to say and have taken to replace thumbnails with video frames using browser plugins. I wish YouTube provided that option for users out of the box..
The Minecraft YouTubers are so bad at misleading thumbnails. They always show something that looks impossible or at least very difficult and then you watch the video and see they don’t actually make the thing in the thumbnail.
Another commonality: anything more targeted towards or made by young women having a picture of the YouTuber with a worried expression on their face.
I only noticed once I was looking up something about Sims 4, and saw that there were a couple of big channels with young men in between all the young women.
And they all had thumbnails with themselves looking worried or concerned.
Then I started noticing that it is often how lots of female YouTubers in general make their thumbnails, and also male ones of they're doing makeup for example.
Not Just Bikes has a very similar color-based thumbnail strategy.
https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes/videos
Legend in the playlists: https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes/playlists
Yes! They do have some really good ones. Ty for the suggestion. The thumbnail for their video "Dangerous Playgrounds; Learning vs. Design" made me gasp at how absurd it is. I added that one to my watchlist lol.
I think they're open to criticism (and I did criticize) but a misleading thumbnail doesn't seem so bad. I mean, have you heard about Rickrolling?
I play old songs and covers on accordion. Here's my channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@skybrian
This is basically home videos, though, and I like it that way. A bigger audience wouldn't do me any good, and I'm unlikely to do to do anything that makes recording more work than it already is.
I mean, misleading thumbnails and clickbait titles aren't like the worst thing ever, but I do think they're scummy and say something about you if you're using them to profit.
Rickrolling is like sitting on a whoopee cushion, it doesn't count.
And I love the songs "La Vie en Rose" and "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" so it was fun to watch those covers. thanks for sharing!!
I agree with you, and further, even if we count it, rickrolling got tired fast as well. Just as whoopee cushions would if they were being used constantly and every time you clicked a video you wanted to watch it ended up being whoopee cushions. I would prefer skybrian's type of thumbnail. Clickbait thumbnails are tedious and unimaginative and a massive waste of viewers' time. They're not about advertising content, they're about hiding that there is none. Skybrian's are minimalist. WYSIWYG in thumbnail form. He could jazz it up in non-clickbaity ways such as different hats as someone suggested, but if that's not how personality, then there's no real reason to do so, because the people looking for content like his would know they've found it.
If someone makes a living and puts a roof over their head with a clickbait thumbnail, I'm not going to judge them for it anymore than I judge the poor retail employee who has to do a half-hearted pitch for a credit card.
It's not their fault the system requires them to do shitty things to put food on the table.
I'd prefer it if YouTube only allowed thumbnails captured from the video itself.
I don't understand that perspective. Yes, the stereotypical YouTuber 😱 thumbnails are awful, but do you want boon covers to just be a sentence or a paragraph from the book?
It's not a useful thumbnail because it's text. Text articles are best listed without any thumbnail at all, like in topic listings on Tildes. (Admittedly, a good headline isn't a quote from the article, though.)
But a thumbnail of an photo should be the photo, possibly cropped. Also, when I browse a folder containing videos on my Mac, it shows little thumbnails that actually are frames from the video. It looks pretty good.
So why shouldn't that apply for videos on YouTube? They also have a title, which can be anything the author wants.
This is only indirectly related to the article, but I personally find clickbaity thumbnails extremely annoying wether they're created by a human or using generative ai, so I've started to employ browser plugins such as this one to replace custom thumbnails with a frame from the actual video. Sometimes custom thumbnails can be informative and helpful, but most of the time removing them eliminates sooo much distracting and/or misleading clickbait that it's worth it imo. So my favourite solution would be to have this option as a native YouTube setting that users could enable. In a way this would also reduce the demand for thumbnail designers, but simply because the impact of thumbnails on a video's success will be non-existent for those with the 'frame-thumbnail' option enabled, hence making clickbait-oriented ai-thumbnail-generators less attractive as well.
I also use a similar plugin and it has made my experience with YouTube so much more enjoyable. At this point I don't know if I can go back to the way YouTube looks without it anymore.
The few times that a custom thumbnail is actually useful is a downside, but it's just so rare nowadays. When I started using the plugin I had a separate browser without it as a comparison and there were only 2 videos over the month that a custom thumbnail was truly beneficial to the videos I was watching. I'll probably keep an eye on it every once in awhile just in case, but so far very happy.
Thank you!
I would never even have thought to search for this type of plugin.
Someone needs to explain how $10,000 is going into thumbnails. Take a picture vaguely related to the video. Slap on a red arrow and a picture of YouTube looking surprised.
Bam done in 5 minutes.
The thumbnail is one of the most important parts of the video in terms of how many views it get. Because of the exponential nature of discovery on youtube, having a good thumbnail is incredibly important.
What looks like a haphazardly thrown together bunch of thumbnail stereotypes to you is actually an incredibly carefully curated and A/B tested image, with every element thoroughly market tested. That is, if you're on the big channels.
Veritasium actually had a video on this where he also looks at thumbnails and why they're so effective.
You can see it here.
I'm in favor of anything that gets rid of those stupid surprised faces with open mouths. See Linus Tech Tips if you need examples.