The YouTube Thumbnail Metagame

Special thanks to Raycon for continuing to throw around money during these tough times.
http://buyraycon.com/emplemon

It's good to finally upload a shorter video for once. I'm gonna try to do a few more like this before I tackle the next big project.

I definitely had a good experience changing one of my thumbnails. I have a video called "Recycling is a scam" that originally had a much more complicated thumbnail. Now, it's a very simple thumbnail that focuses mostly on a single image: a recycling bin. And after the change, the views of that video skyrocketed making it one of my most popular of 2019. Now that said, I also dramatically changed the title of the video, so it's hard to know how much credit to give the thumbnail.

After seeing your video, honestly, if he ever comes back and say "nah, I just did it for the lulz" I would still believe him. Would even say that's some grade-A level of trolling.

I'd like to see someone explore the best bad thumbnails. Like Keemstar's videos. They look terrible, and he could easily afford a graphic designer, but they are recognizable and they work.

When I see - "Eccentric facial expression on an oversaturated background" I just think... yep, next.

The red boarder also hides the red ‘watched’ bar YouTube puts on previously viewed videos making you question if you’ve seen the video before and thus more likely to click on it again. Evil genius.

2:00 Basic Graphic Design
2:53 Look at Album Covers
3:30 Visual Symbolism
5:10 RayCon ADVERTIZEMENT
13:40 V Sauce
13:57 EmpLemon's Thumbnail Process

Lmao that GameTheory thumbnail

The thumbnail you showed at 1:20 is an outstanding example. Recognized it instantly as the Majora's Mask video from Nerrel, there really is something about it that makes it stand out so much.

Kraut has the best thumbnails in my opinion hands down. Beautiful hand drawn artwork that actually convinces you to watch an hour+ long video.

EmpLemon : "Here's the why and how to make a thumbnail."
Also EmpLemon : Uses eyebleeding colors and unworldly unorthodox memetic designs

Every video that it's on trending be like: ➡️⭕️ 😱

You forgot to mention how often thumbnail designers make the mistake of putting text in the bottom right corner without realizing it will be partially obscured by the time/duration indicator and thus impossible to read. Never put anything in the bottom right corner!

This doesn’t only help YouTubers but musicians as well. Thank you.

Honestly this video is 10 million times more helpful, than what all these self proclaimed youtube experts would tell you. It's a shame that so many small youtubers get picked up by the heartless machinery they promote.

The changing thumbnail meta is as follows:
1. The first thumbnail you upload is focused on drawing in your current subscribers
2. After the first 24 hours change it to something that's more relatable to a wider audience
3. After 48 hours - 1 week, change it to a highly generic thumbnail that can capture a super wide audience.

The purpose is to change thumbnails based on Youtube's recommendation algorithm because it first pushes your videos to your closest fans and the video gets a high CTR and watch time it pushes the video to a wider and wider audience. This is why people change their thumbnails so much.

i always enjoy Ahoy's thumbnails, some of the best i've seen on the platform.

This is the only channel where I watch the videos all the way through, either it being 16 minutes long or an hour long. It’s always an amazing treat to hear you preach and talk about anything. You have an always will be entertaining <3

I’m so glad you showed asamsaus as an example. That guy not only makes really good videos, but also is incredible at his thumbnail game

I feel like you forgot something important about the meta, i know this video is specifically for thumbnails but this is an argument I feel like it's still worth talking about.
After someone has been enticed enough by the thumbnail, when their curiosity has stopped them from just scrolling your video away like the countless others they see, what will truly drive them to finally tap/click your video is the title.
The title has to be a compliment to both the thumbnail and the video itself, it's what chains them together and both tries to clean up any ambiguity between the two.
Its work doesn't stop there though, while we are becoming more digital and social media's shares have become more important, one of the first things an average person will use to share your video is 'voice'. They will read your title while in a discord call, while they are talking to one of their friends or whoever they want to share your video with. It is true that they wont use the full title, but by itself it can serve as a tool of entice and synthesis of your video, depending on its tone and the audience you want to gather.
For example a serious video can get away with a longer title that tries to pique at the curiosity of the viewers, as they are more prone to click on the video because of the arguments you are discussing rather than its 'fun value'.
Comedic and casuals videos like internet historian's use a short title, something that it's quick, easily recognizable and serves as a enhancement of the thumbnail itself. These titles give little context whose work is to just make clear that you are going to watch a fun video.
There are probably many more uses beside algorithmic value to a title, and if anyone else has tought of some more i'd be happy to ear

I think it's safe to say emplemon is our youtube historian.

I like how EmpLemon wasn't a fan of YouTubers who were placing advertisements on their videos when he is immediately placing some in his videos even though it is much more forgivable in his.

Love it, absolutely love this channel. One of the few channels i actually watch consistently

Kitty0706 was included in this vid 🙏 may He rest in peace 🙏

These days I find that the short clip from hovering over the thumbnail tells me far more than the thumbnail itself.

This should be a "Youtube Metagame" series. Add in the 'empty subs' theory

I'm so glad this video exists. When I first watched it I found it interesting but it didn't go anywhere farther than that. But after a couple of rewatch's, I started to take in the advice and it's helped me finally find a style of thumbnail that looks good while also being my own so thank you for that I guess.

When I was doing YouTube in the past thumbnails were one of my greatest abilities. It's always been my favorite part of making videos. People tend to underestimate just how important they really are

I feel like starting my own channel proper after watching this. Thank you Emperor Lemon!

Never seen someone break down a YouTube thumbnail like that before. I think my brain is going to explode from my mind being opened up thanks to EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) Lemon.

Changing thumbnails 100% works. There have been many videos that I don't see as interesting, but as soon as a more interesting thumbnail pops up, I give it a chance and click.

That was the smoothest transition from video topic to ad read I've ever seen. The video would literally have made sense even without the sponsor

two recent shakeups to the meta I've noticed this year
1. Ditching the whole thing entirely and intentionally returning to that random, sometimes jarring image style
2. Asking a question in the title and answering it in the thumbnail, or vise-versa. Veritasium talks about this in his clickbait video.

You're the best, Emp! As an artist myself i HUGELY appreciate your continued approach to waking people's mind to critical thinking; in this video: symbolism. You're the only channel im truly subscribed to, as i genuinely look forward to every video you upload.

Virgin custom thumbnail vs. Chad auto-selecting a single frame from the video

Cool info on the branding & visual theories. I'm struggling to write a paper about it & your explanation made it easier to understand. Thanks Emp!

YouTube is where I've spent the most time in my life, educational. funny, and interesting videos like these are what I love to see!

fantastic articulation, great idea for a video, amazing editing, this is caviar. Well done!

Dan 'the man' Gheesling has a face I never DON'T want to see😍

I think one good example of YouTube thumbnails is Ahoy's "Iconic Arms" series. An outline of a firearm that is easily recognizable, both in reality and in video games, with both the weapon and the backround using a colour palette found on the weapon's country of origin's flag.

Absolutely love this channel. It always sparks my creativity. Thank you for the enormous amount of time and detail in your work.

Emp is one of the few you tubers that is helping to keep tf2 in the public’s mind and I really appreciate that :)

Adam Neely has a really interesting thumbnail idea. Asking a question in the title, and answering the question bluntly in the thumbnail. It works very well. Gives you zero reason to click the video, and that itself draws you in for the explanation.

Love how you explained your Thumbnail editing style at the end! Great way to look at it!

Raycon's logo totally looks like it would fit as a character's game icon for Smash.

I've been doing still-image composites in Blender, this was actually a nice crash-course in some graphic design basics. Thanks!

No way! 12:22
I always thought AsumSaus has one of the best editing styles and especially thumbnails.


Great stuff including him in your "how to do it right" examples 👍

4:22 Waldo is to the left of the red-striped stand, behind the man reading neswpaper.
Odlaw is hiding behind the second blue-striped stand on the left.

Jeff the killer’s face is a thumbnail that I would never forget.

I remember a period in youtube history where people were seemingly getting away with the thumbnails being straight up uncensored family guy porn

This is the first video I've ever watched on your channel, it was a great introduction to your fantastic YouTube channel, keep up the good work!

Hey Emp, great job as usual! Love your videos, they're great! Honestly you've become very predictable because for the past few years, you keep on making great content. I'm just saying you should shake it up a bit. Just kidding, keep up the good work!

This one I find cool though because Thumbnail Design isn't a topic that is often discussed across YouTube. It is interesting how you compared it to album covers and movie posters, seeing how the former is usually in a square ratio while the latter usually is in a portrait ratio. Meanwhile thumbnails are in a landscape ratio, which helps differentiate it.

I also like how the first album cover you showed was The Velvet Underground & Nico, which is one of my favorite albums!

Emp as someone who grew around your roots, it's ever so satisfying to see you embrace and discuss similar and deserving content creators. Your content has come so far.

Rewatching this video after releasing a few episodes from my youtube series, and I definitely felt like I took a decent amount of time on trying to make a thumbnail in the form branding for the whole series. They were many designs I made but the one you see on my channel I think best represents what the whole series is. Now I hope I'll get more people to watch my show.

Guys I can attest to the fact that thumbnails are incredibly important. You won't believe how many people don't talk to me because I don't trim mine. They are about 5 inches long now

god you’re so great at video essays, genuinely make everything interesting

An amazing example of visual design on Youtube is definitely Ahoy. His simple geometric design is direct, striking and easily understandable. Same style transfers to the videos as well with motion graphics, paired with his deep voice and general vibe it works wonders. Kind of like Kurtzgesagt but much simpler in base design choices.

I just wanna express how awesome it is when Emp includes a full list of the music in the description. In a lot of videos, I'll hear a track and spend hours on a wild goose chase searching for anything close to that song before giving up and probably losing interest in the video halfway through. When I'm watching and EmpLemon video, it's literally just a few clicks to get the song then I'm back on his video.

I love the way Welyn does his thumbnails. He has an artist make it for him and the hand-drawn and colorful aspects really stick out and are how I started being interested in his stuff.

I swear the Racist Mario thumbnail always triggered me some feelings that even Azathoth the blind idiot god couldn't describe.

Should've had a moment to talk abot the titles of the videos themselves as well as the thumbnails. The Title is incredibly important as well to know what the video is and may help give the tone of the video. Wether it's sarcastic, serious, trendy, shocking, mysterious, or informational. Of course i did love the video, and I hope to see more along the way.

I really appreciate now how much work you actually put into your videos. From content to video to thumbnails. Awesome, job man.

The future of thumbnails could be the progression to moving gifs like what you see already when you hover your mouse over them for a second but instead it would be the default and would pause themselves as you watch other videos so as to not be too distracting. on mobile if you scroll down to a thumbnail the video will just start playing from the start without the audio but with subtitles when they're available and cohesive enough so you know the context, and when you click on it the video will start from where you left off a second ago. We might see this happen soon on the desktop version as more space and size is given to them on the home page with every update. Sure it might turn this place into a circus of moving parts and colors that is made to keep attention-deficit children here forever, but that seems to be right up Youtube's street these days.

I always enjoy good thumbnail design. Plus once you have a solid system in place, it can be a lot of fun making new thumbnails for videos!

Honestly I’m glad rebel taxi was mentioned because to me he’s the best when it comes to graphic design thumbnails, sure it’s not the best for getting clicks but it’s stylistically consist, establishing the style of the channel

Hey that was a really good video and I enjoyed that you taught me how YouTube is kind of an art thank you nameless faceless artist man.

Personally, thumbnails are more important for me to recognize videos that I have watched in the past and that I want to find again. When searching for something new or something specific, I find myself reading the titles and subtext more than anything to try to find the most relevant video to what I'm looking for.

Ahh yes, i remember the days when a custom thumbnail was proof of YT partner, RWJ-tier clickbait or other shenanigans.
Funny, I know you said it became available for everyone in 2013, but i wonder when exactly it was that the stigma of custom thumbnails finally subsided?

After this, I wondered about how I remember your videos and your mascot, and I realised that you "sacrifice" branding through your thumbnails, but heavily emphasise branding on the actual video. With the long fireplace shots of your character as the only focal point, it kinda just burns it into my memory.

I'm glad kitty0706 was featured here. It makes me happy to see that even so long after he died people still come back to his channel to see how much he cared about it.

It's only just specific types of videos that greatly benefit from a well designed thumbnail, something like animal videos can easily get millions of views with literally any one of the default 3 frames from the video itself, in fact a custom thumbnail would probably deter viewers heavily. Such videos rely more on quirky titles than anything, it's mostly just geek culture content that calls for special thumbnails with a lot of thought put into them.

A lot of this can be said about book covers. You shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you should absolutely design the cover based on the assumption that people will.

Everyone spends time figuring out how to design their thumbnail while Techoblade being big brain here uses fan art

To be honest Emp
The Thumbnail barely affected my choice of clicking on to your videos.
The New Coke video got me into your entier channel as I recently watched a bunch of Analasys videos and story videos.
And after that,each video is been watched as they are equally fun to watch due to the amount of effort and entertaning factor you provide as an You Tuber.
But if it was a Thumbnail,the New Coke one is Simple and it made me click on it because I am curious to see what its about.
Too much colour and too much effects I tend to shy away,in case of Red Herring that has too much Red in it or Leafy Was Here is also too much in my opinion.
But both I watched em for the content you make,because it is so damn entertaning.

You know Emp, I don't always agree with your hot-takes but I always come back for more because your videos are so stylistic and you are so articulate. As far as I'm concerned your videos are works of art! This being said, I think your insight on thumbnails here is spot on!!!

I love how when you mentioned recognizing a creator by their thumbnail, saying it has done its job, you put AsumSaus' channel in, lovely channel

11:59 This is a great point that really re-orineted how I approach my YouTube thumbnails. I feel like recently I've been overloading information/'clickbait' into some of my thumbnails rather than my own personality or branding.

This has actually been incredibly helpful.

Thank you!

Hey Emp, could you make a video about when is the best time to do a face reveal? I think its a bit of an art, and some imprecise science, and you could probably get some mileage out of the sub boost people got after a face reveal.

Ahoy's simplistic and artistic pleasing thumbnails really hooks me in to watch a 1 hour video about a game i never heard of.






Tbh Ahoy is very gud

Always a treat when you upload. Keep up the good work.

how to make a good thumbnail:
step one: don’t put your face in the thumbnail
Step two: profit

What they show at 7 pm: internet historian
At midnight: emplemon






At 4 am: internet historian incognito mode

Watching these videos already make you feel like you’re watching big brain shit but watching these high as fuck go hard the Simpson parts keep you glued

Not only are your videos entertaining, funny, and incredibly well made but you made me consider something deeply that I had never really put much thought into before, yet it was something right infront me this whole time. And what a twist ending! Thanks for making this videos during these times Emp, looking forward to the next one. Love ya

I really love this video it perfectly shows off the little things that matter so much in the end

The change in thumbnails actually allows videos that you’ve already watched or videos from channels that you’re subscribed to to reappear in your youtube feed.

for anyone wondering, the wingdings text at 2:42 says "downward spiral"

Very good video.

These videos are changing me from making mediocre videos to paying more attention to editing...

This video was so helpful, thank you!

I use negative space in my thumbnails. I think it looks pretty cool. More people should use it.

My relative recommended me this video and I am so happy he did. This video is great and informative. Thank you so much for this information and Ill be sure to use it for my next youtube thumbnail that I make. Currently I am experimenting with showing branding without the need of a logo so I have more space to show the contents of my video. I didnt know about the rule of thirds rule, so Ill be sure to use that next time I make a thumbnail too. Thank you

As someone majoring in graphic design I really liked this video. Cause even I tend to click on flashy/colorful looking thumbnails

4:24 weirdly my eyes were already looking at the exact location where Wally was when that picture came up. So I technically found Wally in less than half a second.

Recognizing video by thumbnail using Kurzgesat as an example is perfect!
The first time I saw the art, I was intrigued and every time seeing their thumbnails after was instant recognition and clicking before recognizing the subject matter.

On the topic of symbolism, I think it's pretty interesting how the yellow 'demonetized' icon became iconic just because of how often creators throw it up in thumbnails and in graphics. I don't know that most creators realize that, as viewers, we never actually see that symbol on videos.

Empleomon sounds like a modern artist explaining a fully black canvas to people.

"You may not have noticed it but your brain did" is such an iconic line that proves RLM's branding in a video all about branding. Well played Emp

Every time I hear the Gran Turismo 4 soundtrack in your videos, it's a subliminal shot of calming nostalgia. Keep usin' the good tunes, man.

This video was very educational, and I think I'll use some of its mantras for my own channel. What I found surprising was that thumbnails have a lot in common with shocking ads.
1. Both don't need to sell anything to its viewers, but just make them remember.
2. It should be distinct but, still, represent your brand.
3. Not everything works twice or works at all.
There are probably more, but these free are the most striking.

I’m surprised how many of these channels I recognize, like Down the Rabbit Hole and Nirrel. I’m glad that they are getting recognition, they make amazing content!

My own brush with the algorithm was, I'm certain, entirely dictated by a thumbnail I put zero thought into. A wall of text made in photoshop that simply read "You are a horrible person", which lead to a CTR capping out at 50% (closer to 15 on average).

I always find that I tend to click on thumbnails when the text in the actual image is related -- but not identical -- to the video title. For example, Adam Neely's video thumbnails always include what he calls "anti-clickbait", where the text in the thumbnail technically answers the title's question in as few words as possible. Even though you would think that answering the premise of the video before you've even watched it might be counter-intuitive, it actually makes me wonder what the explanation for that answer is, so I click. So in my opinion, the thumbnail should go directly hand-in-hand with the title, as the two elements are the first impression of a video. Including legible text that compliments the title gives you double the amount of space to let the viewer know what to expect.

As a musician who does freelance graphic design and a new YouTuber, this video is super informative. Should be part of a communications course.

Unironically one of the best resources for thumbnail creation on the site.

An Emplemon video is just one of those things that you have to put everything down before watching.

I think I've never left a comment in your videos before, but I wanna say that you're one of my main inspirations at making videos and you're one of the few people who really get YouTube to an in-depth level. I've been on the site for as long as you I believe, and even though I didn't get to know you because of your YTPs, it shows how much that personal background on the site translated into your knowledge of it and the skill that video making actually takes. You care about YouTube and its community, I should know as (for me) one of the most rewarding aspects of it is reading the comment section of my own vids (which I also recall you saying at some point in other of your videos).
My point is, much respect, my dude, and as I coincidentally am listening to Nine Inch Nails now, let the spiral keep on going down, down, down.

A lot of good info here. I definitely need to put more thought into my thumbnails.

You should go through your videos and explain how you presented them / laid them out the way you did, think it'd be real interesting hearing about your creative process, specially with how you went through what you think about thumbnails.

honestly your thumbnails for Never Ever are half the reason i started whatching you, they really drew mw in. good job!

“But your brain did”

Quality reference right there.

I myself draw my thumbnails every day. It's a bit of a challenge but I think its worth it.

the thumbnails with the "shocked" faces are useful af, as you can directly click the three dots and pray that Susan respects you not being interested in that channel.

Honestly this is something I've always thought about and that something people really take for granted, thumbnails should be looked at the same way as art. Think about it: you have to have a good composition, you have to convey a message with limited means, you need to use varying elements in order to bring certain elements more focus. It's literally just making art!

I think Emp and InternetHistorian are really good examples of good thumbnails

Thank you for this help! I noticed similar patterns with my thumbnails too

Something that you might wanna look at for thumbnails is Magic the Gathering cardart, they have a similar issue in terms of low space to work with and as a result find ways to work around the limitations.

He did it




He changed the thumbnail after sometime to fit a broader audience



What a legend

I always thought YouTube and it’s Thumbnails were an elaborate hoax

9:50 "Your face is meaningless."

What is very funny, YT tried to increase the size of all thumbnails recently. The issue was, the thumbnails in landscape (horizontal) mode were then bigger than most phone screens. While it is a good idea, to increase the profile of the thumbnails, it is straitup shit, if you cannot even see one at a time. Regardless of how it made browsing extremly tidious.

“Your face is just a waste of space.”

Yeah. I know.

Overthinking the thumbnail is a good thing, because ultimately you will be more satisfied

Honestly came just to comment about how repulsive the thumbnail is. Which, I guess, means it’s working.

Whilst using mobile I found out that you can actually make a thumbnail transparent. I found this out by swiping up whilst watching a video in landscape mode and I saw that the thumbnail for one of the recommended videos was not a rectangle. I'm not actually sure how this was done but it's definitely possible

I think VSauce has talked about the importance of YT thumbnails and how he thinks of them as super important visual headlines (thinking about the title and thumbnail even before the script is finalized) in his ted talk so certain segments within the yt community definitely know about his style and appreciate it

Adam Neely is great at designing thumbnails. He employs the same "raise a question" tactic that was mentioned, but unlike others, he tries to avoid making you sit and wait through a 15 minute video for a 2 second answer. His best thumbnails simultaneously raise and answer simple questions and spends the video giving great explanations about how he came to that conclusion.

It blew my mind when I found out that the little tic tac toe board that appears on the cropping tool is a composition tool

If only kitty could live till this moment to see his video being a part and subject of a video essay... True legend, you'll stay forever in our minds.

the whole “changing your thumbnail boosts performance” thing is true and it haunts me like i’ll see a video i’ve watched before or seen in my Feed™️ but it will have a new thumbnail and it freaks me out

I change my thumbnails from time to time and it gives a small boost but nothing I can really say for sure helps a lot

I think Anklespankin might have an interesting approach to actually marrying branding and visual design by photoshopping his face onto the the characters, the goofy appearance showing his style while also having some efficiency bonuses

Raywilliamjohnson really was a pioneer in many respects...truly ahead of his time

Dude, I discovered this channel due to the amazing thumbnails!

Did Emp just make a 16 minute video to flex on us with his process for making thumbnails?

I wish I had the specific video to link you but the recently rising youtuber/twitch streamer Ludwig is pretty open about what he does and how it works. I noticed he changes his titles and thumbnails sometimes from push notifications not matching on my phone. Later he explained that after ~1 hour if his video has lower than average traffic he will change the title for sure and sometimes the thumbnail. While he doesn't understand it exactly the best way to put it would be like hoping for a rare drop in an RPG. I don't think it necessarily promotes you more to do it but it seems like it gives you another "roll" to be favored in an algorithm. It's similar to uploading a new video in a way.

Netflix changes the thumbnails every once in a while and it really does help me rethink on watching a show.

i never even noticed that the radial pattern had that effect. Honestly the youtube wake up is a lot clearer than that and in my opinion the current design is a bit too ambiguous

Emplemon: talks about how to make your thumbnail stand out while taking size into consideration




YouTube 1 day later: makes thumbnails fucking giant.

9:11 Damn it is so nice seeing Wrestling with Wregret in an Emplemon video. Love that guy, very underrated

Vagrant holiday has some pretty eye-catching and memorable thumbnail designs. Even tho he has only 8 videos and I've seen them all, Everytime one pops up in my feed I have to click on it!

I like the thumbnails that use the first frame of the video as the picture, so when you click on it its like a robot unfreezing and then talking to you

I really like how Adam Neely goes against the meta in his thumbnails. The video's title asks an open-ended question and the thumbnail straight up answers it but you as a viewer left wondering about how he arrived at that answer so you can't help but click the video!

Great video, also I love the use of Mario Paint/RPG/Kart music, kudos.

My favourite thumbnail has to be of Jontron crying, that stuff’s pure gold

for me it's actually a mix of thumbnails and especially titles, they can both single handedly dissuade or persuade my ape brain to click and a mix of the two makes a video stick out among the ones i might possibly click on using ape brain. You have to learn to manipulate the ape brains of your general audience.

Yet again another video from the legendary meme expert Emplemon

After hearing this intellectual discussion of thumbnails, it was funny to go back and see what thumbnail this video actually used.

Yeah thumbnails are a double-edged sword for content creators. Once you start getting creative, you could be driving away potential viewers because of an ugly thumbnail. That's pretty much how I am with any video from Vanoss. I actually found his videos to be quite funny, but I stopped watching him because I developed a seething hatred for his horrific thumbnails.

Hello Emp.


At 1:49 in the video, I admire your usage of Wingdings to create the text "downward spiral."






Bravo.

It's funny that you mentioned about adding the thumbnail image into the video itself, because I used to do that exact thing back in 2012.
I remember someone mentioning an apparent glitch where you have the thumbnail at the end of the video for about thirty seconds, and then cut the majority of the length of that image off in YouTube's very own editor to mask that you had done this. It never worked for me, however.

The argument about stylization is actually why I really like daily dose of internet. I love watching a video for a certain thing and it being shown very early in. and since I'm satisfied I tend to stay longer and finish the video completely because I'm not frustrated by skipping for the thing I click for.

I treat most of my thumbnails as a graphic design project. If the thumbnail looks good, people are more inclined to click on it obviously. They will also have a more positive outlook on the video in they notice you put work in the thumbnail

Hey emplemon hope you’re able to read this comment but recently I took your advice and decide to change up my thumbnails on older videos to see if it would improve viewership and I can confirm that it improved my viewership when looking at the analytics in the YouTube studio when I changed my thumbnail

"The old days of YouTube" as I hear Forest Maze in the background. The most appropriate song to accompany the segment.

YouTube is filled with a seemingly unending supply of "channel gurus" purporting to have insight into the thumbnail phenomenon, but your video is the first one I watched that I felt like I learned something from. Thank you.

One interesting take on the thumbnail metagame (which you could consider a form of your Information Flow example) is Adam Neely's thumbnails. (Adam's channel is music- and music theory-focused.) Some of his videos are titled with a question (one of my favorites is, "What Key is 'Sweet Home Alabama' In?") and the thumbnail itself contains the answer to the question ("it's in d.") That succinct question-and-answer format is juxtaposed with the length of the video (if I remember right, that Sweet Home Alabama example is about 7-8 minutes long) which then prompts the viewer to say "but why? Why is that the answer? Why is this a question that needs to be asked?" and draw them in to watching the video.

Has anyone noticed that videos with no thumbnails are just overall more entertaining?

I think the best thumbnails are from the video. You think its click bait then but its not because that wack ass thumbnail you saw is in there.
Then it becomes an easter egg hunt to find the thumbnail. When you finally find it you feel a combination of shame, self fulfillment, and horny

What about Cr1tikal (penguinz0): he uses default frames for thumbnails, but since he is great at putting titles on his videos and he's known for making good content it doesn't matter

AVGN is an example of someone who went back through their old videos and updated their thumbnails with modern renditions and boosted the view count tremendously from doing so

I remember watching you when you made YTPs they were brilliant

Your content is so addicting that I'm on a downward spiral.

As thoughtful as your video is I’m surprised you missed that YouTube closest relative isn’t anything you mentioned... it’s SKU space in retail.

imagine a "They will never ever be" a game like Team fortress 2

That Raycon ad was classy, relevant within the video, and I’m happy I watched it. Classy 👌

"You may be wondering if I'm overthinking all this."

You clearly don't know me - the word "overthinking" is not in my vocabulary. Loved hearing the thought process on your thumbnail design.

Used to work at a Best Buy return center, and can indeed confirm that airpods are FUCKING TAT

Adam Neely has another twist on the question thumbnail for some of his Q&A videos - the video title is in the form of a question, with the thumbnail showing the answer very clearly, and in a distinctive visual style that I think effectively mirrors his presentation style.

See when you showed Dan Gheesling's thumbnail in the section where you talk about the face's recognizability, I recognized him immediately.

I literally study your videos

So far my favorite new experimental source of thumbnail design hails from channel Stimpee. For months now every single one of them is ripped straight out of some gay porno and photoshopped to appear relevant to the video. Scrolling through his videos is like wandering through some modern art gallery.

your most obnoxious advert yet, but the overall video is great. keep up the good work. love some more yt geographic the soundtracks alone are something special

Thumbnails are like postage stamps paying for digital video delivery to the viewers' eyeballs.

"For smaller channels, your face is kind of meaningless"
>shows thumbnail from Dan Gheesling, actual reality TV celebrity

I like it

That Battlefront 3 video brings back memories. It was the first time I got rick rolled, but I still remember being so disappointed to learn the game was cancelled. More than a decade later and it still isn't here. RIP

There are apps that switch the thumbnail automatically and count the views each one gets. People use it and homemade, flashy thumbnails with pictures of faces and boobs just work. They get a lot of views

YOU KNOW WHAT THIS VIDEO ACCOMPLISHED?To make me re-watch that amazing Team Fabulous 2 video.
Thanks!

They've scaled up thumbnails on mobile, so now it's a bit less of a concern considering that most viewers are on mobile anyways

That was one of the sneakiest ad placements and transitions ever. Gg

good thumbnails are great! but tbh i personally prefer a random frame from a video as a thumbnail over a bad one

I’ve seen older Chadtronic videos that recirculated into my recommendations with newer thumbnails, since he seems to have an artist on hand to make his thumbnails.

Your thumbnail for there will never be another player like Hungrybox kept me watching the video for 2 weeks until finally got sick of scrolling past it and found out it was actually a good video.

changing your thumbnail does boost the video's performance. Thoughty2 makes brilliant videos (the type best to watch before bed btw). He changes it 3-5 times within the first 5 days.

after making what is essentially full length feature films I'm glad Emp was able to get a sponsor with something that isn't raid garbage legends.

Dude I fucking promise I noticed the thumbnail work you did. I spend so much time scrolling through YouTube and sometimes a thumbnail blows me away. I loved your Matt Watson thumbnail, and while I didn’t say it was in that category, it almost was. Very good design work, Emp

I've personally noticed a lot of channels, mainly educational ones like Sci Show and PBS Eons do this a lot, switching out old thumbails, sometimes within weeks or sometimes in a couple of hours. Its gotten me a few times absentmindedly thinking it was a new video by them.

I was already thinking about how you can use white to make the borders look like a different shape than a square, "negative space" is a perfect term for it. Surprised it isn't used more often, since anything that isn't a rectangle just screams "LOOK AT MEEEEEE!!!!!" I guess you'd have to be reserved with it since it reduces an already limited space.
Gonna go look up "graphic design" in the search bar to see what actual professionals make lol

This video comes out just as I am starting YouTube! I’ll be thinking of this for my next thumbnail!

Thumbnail-changing absolutely works. I've had several videos that caught massive second winds months or even years later within a short period after I changed their thumbnails to look better. I would say it's always worth reworking them if you think they might suck.

Have you seen WayneradioTV's "Half Life VR with AI" video thumbnails? Absolutely gorgeous art. Probably part of the reason why it got so popular. They're unlike any thumbnails I've seen before.

Your thumbnail for this video is as meta as the video. Nice work.

mid-tone solid color blocks to stand out from both muddled real life and generic bright eye-catchers, combined with a wrapping frame to brand all videos consistently without obscuring the content image, it doesnt have to be that complicated honestly, the single most outstanding thing you can do is apply even a lick of aesthetic sense

Adam Neely is a great example of a different meta. He uses the ‘anti-click bait’ method through answering the video title’s question in the thumbnail of the same video

The old "Gran Turismo" music gets me evertime

The optical illusion at 13:33 still confuses me after staring at it for 5 minutes

There will never ever be another Youtube group like The Sidemen.

I consider Vsauce's thumbnails the peak. No text, just pure captivating art.

Ladies and gentlemen, the perfect archived image of the thumbnail exposing Luigi's plunger. Wow. Here of all places...

I think the "changing thumbnail to get more views" thing might be true, not only because I see a lot of YouTubers do it nowadays, but also because Netflix has been doing it for a few years now and it seems to be working. Netflix has different thumbnails created for their titles according to people's interests and location. Over the years, I've seen at least 6 different thumbnails for Breaking Bad.

Ayo Destiny reference.

I've been liking your thumbnails for a long time. Now I know why :)

I think the thumbnail I put the most effort into was my Chipspeech Buzzfeed one, and that was literally just the wheeze meme over a picture of a salad
I guess being a speech synthesis YouTuber doesn't really require that much energy

Internet happy merchant here.

I sold on multiple e-commerce platform before, dropped a few and move to full digital delivery, but principal remains the same, only thing people actually check is the thumbnail of your products. That's why you actually have 1/5 products with six 1/5 reviews. Even bad reviews do not deter people from buying a bad product if the product thumbnail/picture is polished. About 10% of the people will actually read what you write on the product page or realize they are being upsold/dropshipped and will go shop elsewhere.

The Jerma Rumble 3 thumbnail is one of the most iconic thumbnails as well. Up there with Team Fabulous 2's thumbnail.
It has Jerma's branding AND it's interesting.

oh my god I just realised that the dumpster gag is continually piled up with stuff from previous videos

thats amazing!

Nerrel's majora's mask 3D video's thumbnail is the best thumbnail on the platform.

I've literally scraped entire videos just because there was no good screen cap to pull for the thumbnail; which unfortunately is more important than even the video itself. Fact of the matter is that you can have a fantastic story to share with your audience but it's meaningless if you can get them to click on the story in the first place. Yet most YouTubers seem to treat the thumbnail as an afterthought. It's easily the second biggest mistake small YouTubers (first being not giving their content something unique to set them apart from the competition).

Thank you for teaching me about graphic design and marketing.

Emp, are you gonna do more Never Ever documentaries? Because they are amazing, the Stanislav Petrov one is one of the best things I've seen on YT.

Just happened to be binging Emp's older vids and clicked to this one only to realize it was posted two years ago on this very day. God, time's passed that quickly already?

I love how he has TP hoarded in his living room.

"Make yourselves comfortable" - EmpLemon 2020

I swear emp, your music choices are so good they're distracting

Because of you, I'm gonna focus a little more on thumbnails.

Figure-ground principle:

Emplemon: yeah we don’t do that here

A good case of good thumbnail design comes from KaptainKristian. The thumbnail alone is visually striking, but looking at his channel as a whole, you’ll see that the videos are color-coded to create a rainbow type of look.

Please do a "never ever" on TF2 one day. I wish there were more casual shooters like it.
Every FPS seems to be going the route of being competitive in a game design sense.
I can hop into a server midway through a match, rocketjump around like a lunatic, getting only one kill, lose the game, and still have a great time.
Any other fps; You start at the beginning of a match. Your team is not as good as the other team. You lose. You have a bad time.

Ayy AsumSaus. He's one of the best Melee-related channels on the site.

My fave thumbnails are from the T.U.G.S. by Ricky & Elliot (Now internet today before i don't know what they were).

They almost always featured this stock image of this kid gamer with exaggerated eyes photoshopped on top, and it almost always interacted with the largest topic on the video.

Lovely.

Contrapoints, while being an opinionated boring asshole with an upload schedule, has an actually impressive production quality, and it directly translates to the thumbnail/ title game, with just a shot of themselves in full makeup on the set they built.

This should be played in english class when covering the symbolic meanings of the film posters. 100% more interseting

dude, your thumbnails are so memorable i immediately knew who you were by that hungrybox thumbnail

8:32 Nick Robinson's been pulling this tactic for the past year or so to great success.

I don't think it's directly affecting the algorithm, but it definitely effects who clicks on the video itself. People who weren't interested click on the video with the new thumbnail, and all of the sudden traffic makes youtube push the video a little bit more.

Good advice video and honestly your thumbnails are top tier.

As a dark mode enthusiast I sure hope negative space doesn't take off lol

3:01 Good album covers are like good thumbnails.
They can convince people that the album/video is something that it isn't.
And that's why I assumed that Radiohead's music would be interesting.

Pyro is one of the few people with great thumbnails

4:40 lmao the comment "unique results" is literally hilarious, I would call it either "different to weird results" but eh unique is just as good.

The changing thumbnail trick is 100% true. I can' tell you how many videos I've seen pop up in my recommended with the comments discussing how the thumbnail changed.

I must say that i'm attracted to 2 kinds of thumbnail.

Either one so weird and outlandish that i have no idea what hell it is and i feel like i need to uncover the mistery.

The other one is the kind that pushes a really interesting subject matter through a intriguing question that is geniunely smart, not at all an obvious clickbait. Bonus points if the wording is funny.

History, science and technology are one thing, but also sociology, economy or any field can be interesting to anyone depending on how you present it.

Tom Scott is a genius at it.

I FUCKING DESPISE VIDEOS WITH FACES AND EXAGERATED EXPRESSIONS. They are not funny, i avoid them like the plague.

Mista GG comes to mind. It was very common to see comments praising his videos back in the days of his "The Predator Chronicles" series, saying that they were shocked that someone with such seemingly cringey thumbnails would be so funny otherwise.

I know you won’t be reading this emp, but I just want to let you know that you’re a really big inspiration for me, and I mean that genuinely
Thanks man :]

yes, because “DEMONIC MINION SUMMONINGS GONE WRONG AT 3AM! COPS CALLED!” is worthy of a view

I can confirm the thumbnail change theory. I once changed all my thumbnails on my channel in 2018 and I got more than 100k views views on 1 year old videos.

This is probably the first Raycon sponsorship I heard where someone is openly saying AirPods.

Nice video and great editing bro!

"Your face is a waste of space"
-EmpLemon 2020

Vsauce has the best thumbnails, hands down. No small contributor to his size and success.

So I download a lot of videos.
If I actually see a video with a good thumbnail, I go through all the additional trouble of downloading it and integrating it into the video's metadata just to have it where it belongs. Thumbnails are important.

I was watching some reddit videos of a guy just reading on one topic fe. choosing beggars.

And he started making low key no standard red circles on the whole thumbnail.

It worked.

The ones with no standard red circles had a lot more views.
I mean from single k digits to double or triple ones.

Just bought Raycons with your code and the joke's on you! I wanted Raycons before this video! The 15% was a nice bonus!

"Your face is a waste of space"
Emerorlemon 2020 (year of the bat)

Thumbnail creation is basically painting if the painting is supposed to grab your attention.

9:10 The fact that I now know EmpLemon watches Wrestling With Wregret gives me so much serotonin

Good 'ol Empy' Lem' back at it again.

I appreciate the avid use of TF2 in this video. Keep it up!

Whenever I see a great thumbnail with a long video length:




“This is gonna be a good one”

1 year and 4 months later and I'm still laughing at "vore world"

It's funny that you picked Dan Gheesling as a lesser-known creator, since, while he definitely is, his face is actually somewhat recognizable to some people because he was one of the most successful and popular winners of Big Brother.

Time to become a Thumbnail Engineer

And then we have moist critikal’s thumbnails...

What's ironic is that this is one of your weakest thumbnails. Nearly all of your thumbnails have one distinct, standout subject that's easy to remember (Matt Watson, the color inverted Leafy, that guy from Futurama, etc.) This one has so much stuff on it that it just doesn't have the same appeal. As a YouTube viewer, the small compulsive urge to watch the video is weaker with this one. Ironically, the video with more clickbait on it is less appealing.

I will absolutely listen to The Downward Spiral... my favorite song is Ruiner!

I think Adam Neely's thumbnails are a good example of what a GOOD thumbnail should be. His Q&A video titles are questions from his viewers, and thumbnail just a pic of him, and a simple response text to the question, like "Yes." or "No", or even "Maybe" on the thumbnail. And the actual video answers the question fully. It's like reverse click-baiting(?) idk lol

Having a home made looking thumbnail is a benefit really

And just like that, thumbnails became much bigger on mobile. Quite a coincidence.

this man actually has the best ad reads in the fucking game, how does he do it

minime has some of the funniest thumbnails in the review scene

The majoras mask thumbnail is so fucking iconic

Look I’m just saying if you’ve so much as seen an emplemon thumbnail, you instantly know you should never ware headphones in the video.
Now that’s art.

Eventually the meta will just be a return to not using custom thumbnails again.

Man, I love the choice of BGM you put on the Video!

That transition to the ad really made me say "bruh, come on" out loud

The wingdings in your example thumbnail translate to DOWNWARD SPIRAL. Neat touch.

"smaller channels [...] face is meaningless"

*shows thumbnail of Dan Gheesling, winner of Big Brother*

Good one, Emp

Dude I’m so glad you mentioned rebeltaxi because I went to the channel to see what it would look like on dark mode since I hadn’t seen a video show up in my notifications for a while and (which I’m bad at paying attention to or keeping up with basically it’s a second subscription tab for me so I figured that was on me however) low and behold somehow my notifications were switched from “all” to “none” and I definitely didn’t manually do that myself youtube or should I say youtrash 😒

Thanks now I can’t stop analysing every thumbnail

I'm a simple girl. I see an appealing video, I click.

That Intro made me laugh so hard

I just wanna acknowledge the genius of the "you might not have recognized it, but your brain did" line. Immediately showing that image of the hand pressing down on the brain, which was in the thumbnail of this video. Proves that your brain is influenced by the thumbnail since that image was instantly recognizable, as well as being an illustration of the Vsauce technique mentioned in the video. All that in 2 fucking seconds. Genius.

9:51 that's a funny example because I know Dan Gheesling won Big Brother and is considered one of the best players, so he at least has a leg up on name recognition compared to other people

Noticed that Veritasium normally changes video thumbnails at least once for most videos now

I don't know if that was the case back when this was published (it didn't appear so) but nowadays I can definitely tell there are a lot of old videos I didn't watch (but remembered the thumbnail) being recommended to me again a couple weeks or months after it was published and their thumbnail was different. Now this could be survivor bias or confirmation bias but it's at least noticeable

Ive just watch things that are worth clicking ,decent point very according to the human prospect. Keep the good work.

If you play with negative space around the thumbnail, you might look like an advertisement.

To all content creators, If changing your thumbnail results in higher views, it's because you tricked me into clicking a video I've already watched. Do it once and it might just look like a harmless adjustment, but do it more than once and you will earn dislikes from (hopefully) a lot of people.

I am very able to dislike a video on principle, even if I really enjoyed watching it.

I doubt thumbnails makes for any interesting content. You can have the best thumbnail in the world or the best title, but if your video is clickbait or just boring as fuck to listen or watch, i doubt it makes any difference. Some youtubers made it big without giving a single care for thumbnails.

One of my favorite thumbnails from Yt is Captain Disillusion's "Highly engaging thumbnail"

"This Guy Edits" a professional video editing channel shows his analytics and proves in his video, "Unfair Advantage: 5 Ways to Get More Views on YouTube", that changing his Title and Thumbnail got him more traffic. On one he changed the thumbnail 6 times to strike gold.

I remember most clips and audio samples from Emp videos but I can’t for the life of me remember where the “More fucking pain,” clip came from.

I love that Nerrels thumbnail was given spotlight

I’ve gotten in the habit of purposely avoiding all content with the “attractive lady” clickbait in the thumbnail. I don’t want to reward that kind of thing, however weird that might sound. I just kind of roll my eyes when I see it. So, I passed this video four times in my feed today before I realized it was you lmao.

Shounic has the best thumbnails I've seen on YT as of now.

He showed my boy Dan Gheesling, this video is so blessed!

I don't know if the thumbnail changing trick works, but...
CallMeCarson changed a thumbnail on one of his older videos to simply being called "The Illegal Game", and it certainly caught MY attention.
So, who knows. It might work.

All the good YTP's have been claimed by Viacom and shit i want to cry.

Tbh, the title or uploader is what gets me to watch a video 99% of the time.

Me: Haha pretty picture go click

My brain: To be fair, you need a very high IQ to understand the subtle humor of thisbthumbnail

Thoughty2 changes the title and thumbnails of his videos all the time. And I presume it works.

I never noticed rebel taxis thumbnails were supposed to be like that, my mind just sort of added the square around it lol

If the thumbnail is representative of the video, then my thumbnails on my videos are perfect. I put zero effort into my videos, and my thumbnails reflect this.

9:51
Is that two time winner of big brother, co-member of Team Unity, world premier Dark Souls player, Daniel (Ryan Gary AL Fox Letourneau) Gheesling?

EmperorLemon: YouTube Thumbnails are important

All viewers: Ah yes, my fellow genius, you raise an excellent point! I'll be sure to experiment with my thumbnails in the next video :smirk:

im starting to think emplemon is a genius

Boy I remember those 3 pregenerated thumbnails. Also thanks for Beware the Forest's Mushrooms

Watching this bad boy right before I start sketching a couple thumbnails for videos I plan on making

if you thought i would miss that hyuna cameo at 4:38 you've got a big storm coming

How dare you disrespect the national treasure that is Dan Gheesling. Have you ever seen that man crack an Egg? He’s a master

Honestly, Internet Historian's thumbnail for the Harold Camping video is probably one of the top 10 thumbnails on YouTube

Roses are red
My soda is fizzing
You also looked up
“My First Time Jizzing”

Great video! My advice: Put a F-reaki-g logo on your thumbnail, your face, your tiny logo, anything,anything with continuity and I'll click on it from my subscribe box if I like your content

You've been knocking it out of the park with all your recent content Emp, I always love watching your videos!

I'd like to acknowledge Adam Neelys thumbnails: If the video has a baity title like "What is the slowest tempo where music is still enjoyable?" he will answer the question in the thumbnail "it's around 33 BPM". That way he gives you the answer but makes you curious for the reason why.

how to 99% youtube thumbnail. step 1: have a face. step 2. have some text. step 3. make sure that face is in an "attracting" pose. (looking scared for a SpOoKy game, showing some kind of shocked emotion, something equally stupid). optional step 4. have an arrow pointing at the thing alluding to what may or may not be covered in the video. ... it's the 1% that are memorable.

Bro, kurzgesagt has probably the most iconic videos and thumbnail style that you know it's a kurzgesagt. You don't need to look at the face to know what's up.

Everything about Team Fabulous 2 is perfect and you can’t tell me otherwise

Watching EmpLemon Video: This is fine. Informative.

Hears Gran Turismo 4 music: Ok, now you get a like.

I love it that YouTube app will play the video when I stay on the thumbnail for a few seconds

The problem with meta-gaming any system is that we will abuse it like crazy.

What you should do has been completely overtaken by what you can do. So that now, everything you can do is what people say you should be doing. Basically, YouTube thumbnails have thrown all meaning, or function out of the window, because now the meaning and function is to get views. So just throw some boobs and anything at all even if it's not in the video.

I saw Kitty's channel. Rest in pest you amazing animator.

I love how P5 music as background is pretty much a standard now

My personal favorite thumbnail is the one for Folding Ideas' video "Minecraft, Sandboxes, and Colonialism".

PokeaimMD has some of the best thumbnail branding 🔥

way back then i thought people put a custom single frame picture in the video so you can choose that as a thumbnail lmao

honestly 20% ill watch just because of a thumbnail. 80% is the title if it sounds interesting ill watch like this vid, i hated the thumbnail but i read the title and it sounded interesting.

Super Mario RPG music always earns a thumbs up from me.

I seen Mr Beast talking to I think it was moistcritikal about it and Beast has multiple thumbnails lined up for the one video and they test them and keep an eye on metrics to see which one is working best, apparently it can be a pretty minor difference that can get clicks too.

4:47 “A site where random amateurs can succeed in spite of their technical shortcomings.”

You mean just like P-

12:21 It’s funny you’ve included AsumSaus in this video, because recently he’s been making more smash videos that follow your style of video-making. He used to just make compilations of melee moment, but his newer videos are informative and talk about melees mechanics. Just compare one of his newer videos to yours and you’ll be able to see the similarity. Also he puts a lot of effort into his thumbnails!

Well this was helpful I just wish I had the equipment

I'm pretty sure AVGN's older videos got more views because of newer thumbnails. Literally, some of his videos from 8 years ago (as of 2020) have newer thumbnails.

Ok super off topic but hearing the Mario Kart Wii menu theme unlocked a level of nostalgia long forgotten.

Anyway, really interesting video. Definitely makes you realize how much thought (or lack of) goes into something so simple and intrinsic to this website.

This is an amazing video about thumbnail thank you to making this video

When are we getting a Never Ever on TF2

Using the Vsauce technique you mentioned in the video was pretty smart

DEAR RAYCON: THE PROMOTION IN THIS VIDEO ACTUALLY INFLUENCED ME AND I AM CONSIDERING PURCHASING RAYCON EARBUDS!

Actually, this is very informative.

Best thumbnail on youtube, "Should you use a lightbox?" By Miniac.

“Haha funny picture I click” - Viewer

The GT4 menu music 2/3 of the way through hit me like a freight train

The more clickbaity they look, the less likely I am to partake as a matter of principle.

Actually I think I can prove that theory. I was watching AVGN like his old stuff and he changed the thumbnails a while back but I've seen more views on them

Even porn sites let you upload custom thumbnails nowadays. It's hard to believe that it wasn't always for everyone

If anybody is interested, at 1:49 the language used in the fake thumbnail is windings. It spells out "Downward Spiral"

The Mario paint music brings this video to masterpiece heights

Since a while I often get videos I've already watched in my recommended, but without the red bar indicating I've already watched it. Could this be a sideeffect of changing thumbnails or titles? It's annoying af, especially because i rarely get recommendations for fresh content anymore...

That ad segway was so smooth that I didn't skip it.

I always assumed that the best thumbnails were built from a similar design principle to the boxes of movies, book covers, album covers, etc.

Yes. You talk about well thought out facts. No, I dont know why do i keep watching because im not a youtuber and i generally hate the now days youtube meta and youtubers who do that. Yes, i do respect you and am here because of your content. No, i did not watch the video to the very end because i did not need anymore information. I will need this information only if i forcefully have to make youtube garbage marketable. Soooo? Thanks?

2:00 everytime I hear this music I immediately think of Speed Luigi, and I can't decide if I love or hate that

Not even 30 seconds in, we already see that even Lemon thinks Destiny is a joke (hopefully) :,3

that is the most blessed thumbnail i have seen

I intentionally avoid clickbait thumbnails and their corresponding videos to avoid sh!tty recommended videos and see only what I care about in my feed, like this video.

they said dont judge a book by its cover...

but this time i have to disagree to that quote

You got me, I clicked for the thumbnail

When he said "Your face is just a waste of space"... I felt that

Ngl, I was drawn in by the thumbnail for Operation Red Herring, that video brought me back to your channel after a break.

Nice psychology there Emp.

I feel attacked. I hardly make thumbnails, I also stopped trying while ago.

Why do I suddenly care about thumbnails when I don't even do YouTube? Seriously EmpLemon, this is an academic paper grade of video.

I love that of all things Dan Gheeslings Minecraft series had a cameo in this video, never expected to see that anywhere on YouTube except his own channel

I've had this account since 2007, and I've learned that I can pass on videos if the thumbnail has:

-A face occupying 50% or more of the available space, especially if its making some stupid, obnoxious expression designed to get impulse clicks from toddlers.
-An avatar that's given center stage, particularly if its a damn furry.
-A title in all caps, or the clickbait part in all caps (ex: I PRANK a BRO in the GHETTO: GONE SEXUAL!?!?! COPS CALLED)
-That bizarre and creepy Youtube Photoshop editing... if you've seen the Spiderman and Elsa videos, or even those primitive survival videos, you know what I mean.
-A woman with her tits hanging out for impulse clicks.

A thumbnail should either say what the video is about, or work in conjunction with the title to convey an emotion. If the title is "Video Game review" and the thumbnail is a depressed guy slouched over on a couch, I generally know what I'm in for, and even a little bit about the comedic or editorial sense of the uploader. Failing that, the thumbnail should at least serve as an introduction to the content to come, serving as a sort of secondary title so that, amidst all of the content that pops up when you search "The Simpsons" that SuperEyePatch Wold video "The Fall of The Simpsons" sticks out. But when the thumbnail is xxXXGAMERGURRRRLXXxx's tits mushed up against the camera, with some soyboy off to the side looking on in absolute shock at said tits, all against a neon background, I know there is absolutely nothing of value in that video and I can skip it without a second thought.

I fucking love the shots at destiny

That ad was so smooth I had to watch all the way through

thank you for three days grace, metallica, breaking benjamin, seether, and all the other great bands in that one frame lol

Here’s a good thumbnail:

Rainbow background with bold text saying DANK MEMES with tons of recognizable characters in the bottom of the screen

I still find it hilariously funny that the Sans thumbnail turned both Sans and Matpat onto a joke that hasn’t gone away

God this audio is so crisp, i love it

I remember you for your old YTPs but this is a nice perspective.

I tend not to click on clickbait thumbnails on purpose
Like, even if I know I'd have liked the video or if it's a youtuber I like, my egotistical ass just doesn't click. Like, I feel like I'm "above that" is a way; I feel like that's the case for a buncha people as well, hence why clickbait seems to work less and less

Damit Now I have to change my thumbnails again haha. Thanks for the in-depth look into your thumbnail process.

Haven't watched the video yet but I can tell this one will be interesting!

I remember camping for his spongebob ytps back in the day.

the start had like 8 thumbnails of videos I've watched

glad to see Nerel and understand why he hes getting in peoples recommended as he is lteraly remaking majoras mask so well my laptop will melt everything around it until it reaches the core

Damn. You are really criticizing the album covers and movie posters and therefore, can use it and show it fully legally

The end justifies the memes.

Prior to being able to select your thumbnail, you were able to make 1/3rd of your video the thumbnail you wanted, choose it as one of the 3 frame options, and then go into YouTube Editor and crop out the 1/3rd of the video.


This was how the cool '90s kids did it at least B)

I always ignore those videos that have thumbnails with someone pulling a stupid face on them

Actually I think that changing your thumbnail does boost views because many times I haven't clicked a video until I see it some time later with a new thumbnail and I wonder why it changed, so I click.

Thumbnails keep me away from certain channels. If it doesn't look like a serious creator made it or if it looks like something I'd see on a RyansToyReview video then that video is much more likely to make me not want to watch it. Thumbnails that do draw me in usually have something hard to visually read making me a bit more interested. Thats a little nebulous but so are thumbnails in general.

You're videos have a very surreal feeling about their thumbnails. And that feels good when I go to read its title im already interested.

This guy has changed since I last saw him

The thumbnail should've had an actual thumb in it.

One of the best YT channel available. Cheers friend

11:30 legit made me die hard

How dare you put down Dan Gheesling like that... my man is the best big brother player of all time

I love the gran turismo music in all of your videos. So nostalgic.

2:51 I see you slipping in that Uncle Dane “The Engineer Mindset” thumbnail like nobody would notice

"Grease Monkey!"
R.I.P Kitty

Raycon be doing god’s work out here

I like the detail of Mario actual getting rid of the clown make up.

That ad transition was slick as hell

I think the AVGN changed all his thumbnails so that they can look more modern.

Wow..
Frederick “Ka-Nudd-sen”

Wow. It always amazes me how little the young youtube community seem to know of the actual world around them… Things that don’t involve looking at a screen seem to have become not worth knowing…
Yes, apparently i am now, in fact, a Grandpa

i can't be the only one who really doesn't look at thumbnails, right? back when clickbaiting thumbnails was all the rage i just decided to stop looking altogether.

9:50 2-1 DROP

never expected to see my boy Dan here

do you or anyone have a link to how i can make a similar radial effect? I use photoshop and illustrator

Gonna be honest almost all the videos I watch are because the thumbnail or the YouTuber

EmpLemon is a legendary YouTuber

walks in
"Debating my mom"
Walks out

Fucking streuth, same.

I saw a comment on how there should be a "there will never be" for team fortress 2

I beg you Templeton please make this

The "newsprint" effect is called dithering.

graphic design


is
my


passion

that alternative Nevermind cover caught me with my pants off

That Segway into the advertisement was gold.

Why didn’t you mention the genius of Ahoy’s or Lemino’s minimalist thumbnails

I love how team fabulous thumbnail is just a random frame from the video

Ima just add 100 arrows with a high contrast and zoomed in circle saying "did you see it?"

Who needs a home when you have raycon

12:21
Glad to see someone acknowledge asumsaus' AMAZING thumbnail design

The thumbnails should be used to help guide the audience not trick them!

The very first frame of the video shows a Game Theory thumbnail intentionally meant to be stupid because it was an April fool's day episode

Seriously?

This guy is so good!!

You know, I tried to customize my thumbnails in my Youtube videos and guess what, if I got to YouTube Studio then I have to confirm my account on my nonexistent computer. What's the point of that?

YouTube's motto: "Find your niche and exploit it!"

I’ve thought about it a bit, and what if 9:52 is an Easter egg? A hint to an upcoming episode of never ever “there will never ever be another reality TV contestant like Dan Gheesling” he’s honestly someone who deserves an episode dedicated to him, and I wouldn’t put it past Emp to leave little clues like that. All I’m saying is I don’t think it’s a mistake...

I need that little end video. And I need it now!

I'd love to see a video where Emp explains his thumbnails like he did with operation red herring

I used to have an old YT channel with my friend Ryan. Our thumbnails, although horribly made, I would always make sure two people were on them.

Wario and Waluigi.

We joke about Wario and Waluigi constantly in the videos, so we tried to make that apart of the magic and although not very successful, I still think they were exceptional.

If you wanna see, the channel is called RinoAndJoel

I'm shocked that the Red Herring video thumbnail is not, in fact, inspired by the poster for Hunt for Red October. You just happened to come to an extremely similar solution to the same problem.

lol that Add pitch was like "you cant even afford rent! so buy raycon now!"

The Operation Red Herring thumbnail looked better without the outline imo

13:21 could have worked before darkmode but now it 50 50

I swear, the Nerrel Majora's Mask 3D thumbnail is still one of my favorite thumbnails. Everytime I see it, I just lose it.

There will never ever be another YouTuber like Filthy Frank

Get ready for the Youtube Description Metagame

You have the best backround music in your videos!

Wrong, there's only one way to make a thumbnail net you a wide audience. One SURE FIRE way.



Big Tiddy

“Smaller channels” shows Dan Gheesling, Big Brother contestant, and one of the most famous reality tv show contestants of all time.

I had completely erased my mind of that image of princess Peach.

At first glance I could have sworn that the Evanescence album cover was like a promotional visual for the anime Ergo Proxy. (Which I would recommend if anyone likes anime.)

You can always choose a frame in middle of the video.

All your videos are ultra worth watching

I knew something was up when you mentioned bland airpods, then raycon took over the video

no, this is "don't kill" 2:17
and this is "I am y*** your god" 2:31

This thumbnail intrigued me to click so nice work man

The sky does minecraft thumbnails are extremely memorable to me, all of them are just so memorable and tell you exactly what video it is, like the cops and robbers thumbnails, I can remember the first one easily even though I haven’t seen it in years

EmpLemon: Graphic design is my passion

I have to say your Horror in Isolation thumbnail is not your best work. Thats all that comes to mind.

I love minimme and his thumbnails

Bruh the ad transition was super smooth

You love to see Dan Gheesling pop out of nowhere

That DANIEL GHEESLING cameo got me pogged out of my mind tho

The reason you removed the youtube wake up icon reminds me of why they changed the poster for 12 Monkeys.

There was one thing where Corridor Digital changed the name of a half life video they made to half life: Alyx right after the game released and it boosted the video quite a bit.

He put Daniel “Guldan” Gheesling in the video. Let’s Go!

As something a bit irrelevant if you ever read this comment since I first watched your channel i think you should someday do a video about Gran Turismo 4, it always feels so surreal listening to the main menu themes on a yt video, Gran Turismo 4 is one of my all time favourite games and it has meant a lot in my life, I played it as a kid and it´s what really got me into cars and i still boot up that ps2 to play it from time to time. I think it would make a good "never ever" video, i can think of a lot of things to say about that game but i´ve never done a video essay and i dont really have the equipment, and it would still have pretty much no exposure as would a video of you have

Can we take a moment to congratulate Downuardo Spiral on their Doctorate in Youtube from Green Simpson University?

I generally don't get mad at clickbait thumbnails. Like, it's your own fault you fell for it, so don't whine about it. It's only a problem if it's true clickbait, such as a thumbnail saying "OMG Shrek came to my house!" and then Shrek not showing up. That's real clickbait.

I remember there was this Scooby Doo parody with a thumbnail that looked like Velma and Daphne were gonna make out and like one scenes was Fred telling them to pose for the thumbnail lmfao.

"when it's popular it doesn't mean it's good"

"My first time jizzing" is my favorite thumbnail ever

the same guy who killed behind the meme for being a normie is making clown jokes in april of 2020

Emplemon watches JobbyTheHong confirmed. 2020 suddenly feels a lot better.

Minimme's thumbnails are godly

Changing the thumbnail of a video does help the a channel I sometimes watch changes the thumbnails of newer videos and I often click them again

this is why videos like "w" (jan misali) grab my attention now. so unassuming and yet so anti-meta

I appreciate the YTP at the end there

I cannot skip Reykon ads fast enough. Screw wireless earbuds. Just screw earbuds really.

The Japanese at 10:29 says
"Misuda¹ super coal²"
¹: Misuda is the literal translation of
ミスター.
²: Coal could come from the word コル, which sounds like "koru". Coral could possibly come from the word too, but it's most likely coal.

Welp, and I always thought the circles on the last thumbnail where just a stylisted version of the downward spiral...

Ive definitely watched a video again exclusively because I didnt remember the thumbnail, just anecdotal, but still. Probably gaining a few more views from idiots like me.

"then your face is just a waste of space"
Oof.

The first 7 seconds was scarily recognizable. I think I watched ALL of those videos O_O

I honestly thought Matt Watson was in some sort of scandal for a second.
No, not that one! The SuperMega Matt Watson. How common is such a name, though, I wonder?

I hate the ones where the youtuber looks like they're about to receive a creamy buffet

8:20 dude that threw me through a loop

This make sense why I thought about thumbnails being changes, with a bunch of Deja vu memories. That literally made me woke until 3 am due to recommended videos being interested with curios thumbnails.

5 seconds in and i’m already liking the video, shrek has swag 3 deserves that

9:52 RIP Dan Gheesling.

LET'S GO.

Don't judge a book by ita cover when the cover is all you see.

6:31 emplemon rickrolling himself lol

A (educational?) music youtuber called Adam Neely uses “anti clickbait”

A title of one of his videos is “what is the slowest music possible?” And the thumbnail has the text “it’s about 33bpm”


He raises a question, answers it briefly, then that leaves you with a different kinda of question than a vsauce thumbnail.

A vsause thumbnail leaves you asking “what”, but an adam neely thumbnail leaves you asking “why”

Both questions can be answered by watching the video, but adam neely’s thumbnails make clicking his videos super comfortable. You know he doesn’t have a cop-out answer or anything,. His thumbnail lets you know that he will get right to the point

9:14 that creeper image is everwhere.

The persona music is so relaxing to have in the background

If thumbnail/title swapping is a legit strategy to get more views, i think it would be because it produces a simulated engagement because something youre familiar with is changing independently of you so now youre interested in watching a video you previously bypassed. If this becomes widespread Im going to have a mental break though because there will be no consistency over time for popular videos, it would be wack.

I actually look at the title of a video rather than the thumbnail tbh. If the title never grabs me, I just most likely won't watch. Unless its someone I already sub and follow, though.

I would say that putting that much effort into your thumbnails isn't worth it, but I honestly won't click on many videos which have a bad thumbnail (or title). With that said, the only thumbnails I consider to be "bad" have ugly people on them or gross-stuff. Something that actually makes me NOT want to look any further. Besides that, I don't mind thumbnails too much, even bad ones.

I'm actually deterred and uninterested specifically by the design and title of the next video: "Operation Red Herring". Ironically. Maybe it's simply not my thing.

It’s amazing that my boi Stimpee never got a cameo in this one, he makes some art pieces.

You aint slick with the amazing Persona 5 ost in the background




Good choice, great game

1:22 Literally at this moment of the video. YouTube on my roku just quit. My annoyance with the site summoned in one moment.

You might want to check Joseph Anderson and his The Villain of Edith Finch thumbnail curfuffle. He wrote about it on hit twitter few months ago.

Is that MOTHERFUCKING JOBBY in the end I see?

When the Thumbnail looks random or looks filmed in Vertical Orientation then you're probably scrolling through Youtube at 3 AM

08:36 I can confirm that it's true. I have seen it happen to several of my videos.

The Matt Wattson thing honestly looks like the poster to American History X

10:00 the person who plays the father in that film is a very successful korean actor, so i don't think this is a very good example.

"My first time jizzing"
-Youtube thumbnail

It was driving me nuts where Emp got that brain image from, then he made the RLM reference

The "luigi exposed thumbnail has been changed 😥😥😥

Imagine creating Luigi's Gay Theory

Thanks for this informative video.

I actually did click on this video because of the thumbnail, it looked interesting

Clickbait: The Lifeblood of Youtube

that Raycon segue caught me off guard lmao

I literally clicked on the video just because I thought 16:20 was a reference and it turns out it was a Mr. Plinkett reference after all.

Practical engineering has great thumbnails

im not even using ones in my channel ffs, im just streaming shit i like in case i kick the bucket

Literally anything happens.
YouTubers: •O•

Great to see you wearing a mask

i submit the boys at internet today for the best thumbnails on youtube

1:58 RIP headphone users

What's the chart at 2:46? That looks interesting

Was Majora's Mask 3D a Bad Remake is the good thumbnail... however it continues to haunt my Youtube suggestions, including this video's

Good video but I feel you haven't really covered any art based thumbnails (like drawn thumbnails like the likes of the ones from Supermega)

it seems that everyone forgot wires exist ever since apple and samsung remove the headphone jack

every youtuber and their mother is being sponsored by raycon now

like i bet the cash is good, but their earphones are trash

I think Stimpee has the best thumbnails. The gay porn really catches my eye.

I'm kinda scared he is gonna get banned because of the baby at 3:15

Then you have YouTubers who look desperate in their thumbnail design. YouTubers who just needs to put red circles and at least one red arrow into almost every thumbnail. Adding short question words like "WHAT?", and the whole thumbnail looking "loud" and obnoxious. – This is apparently a technique that seems to work because popular YouTubers, who really can't stand on their own line Vsauce, utilize it to get millions of views. Probably a lot of young people who don't know better. But it just tells me that their content don't have much substance and aimed at the impressionable youth, and it makes me not wanting to click. – There's just too much impressionable folk on YouTube.

3:26 you forgot the most iconic album cover. Demon Days

8:38

Joseph Anderson, after about a year of his video "The Villain of Edith Finch" being uploaded, changed the thumbnail and it got a relatively large spike in views directly afterwards

i watched this when it was released and wached it again just now lol. great video!

1:41
Can anyone help me find this absurdist masterpiece?

Just put an ahego face in the thumbnail even if it doesn’t have anything to do with the video, works every time

I think it’s hilarious that the thumbnail for this video didn’t load before so clicked on it.

Those ending credits really make me miss your ytp.

downward something something

Emp such a chad putting the ad at the end of the video because he knows people will watch till the end

People look at thumbnails? 12:25 best menu music, ever devised.

6:49 i don't think i've watched whatthebuck for almost a decade, what a throwback.

Bless you, lemon-san

9:55 "For smaller youtubers the face is meaningless"

I think using Dan Gheesling is a pretty poor example since he won a reality TV show. His face is pretty recognizable to a good subset of the YouTube community

I'd say Vsauce cares about his thumbnails

The best thumbnails come from Internet Historian or the Internet Bloodsports guys before they all killed their careers becoming lolcows

The channel Real engineering does it quite nice

My first reaction to the operation red herring is that it was a Youtube red video and ignored it

shots fired at Dan "literally who" Gheesling

the period in time in which this was uploaded was one of the most important ever

Shrek has swag VI is an amazing video with an amazing thumbnail

Always use as many arrows as you can

At 5:26 well that's the firey-est fire segue I've ever heard (since Julien Solomita)

my favorite thumbnail has to be Nostalgia Critic gaping his maw open for his Freddy Got Fingered review

Fact: Using Persona music automatically doubles your subscribers

how to thumbnail:
- white outline around people/objects
- red arrows and circles
- big bold ALL CAPS text
- dramatic facial expression

I fucking hate it. I deliberately won't click on some videos if the thumbnails are too over the top.

I notice high boi has a green border on his thumbnails. Initially I didn’t notice them, but after a couple vids I start looking for it. Very subtle branding

Operation Red Herring was the first video I watched by you so my brain must have noticed it too.

I couldn't have not noticed yours usage of negative space in thimbnails. Red border aside from branding is concealing the red progress bar that shows you where you stopped watching and subconciouslly slightly disturbs the shape of the frame. Not sire if intended but ingenious anyways.

I use my raycon ear buds to tune out during ads from random ear buds!

WarioWare music is definitely the way to go for ad soundtrack lmao

3:03 HOLY SHIT EMPLEMON HOW IS THERE SO MUCH STUFF I LOVE HERE

Yes finally, more emp lemon for my addiction

i didn’t even recognize this channel bruh wtf i used to watch ytp back in the day

I just let Jesus take the wheel with my thumbnails.

did not expect to see AsumSaus in here. proud of my boy

Me : some of the worst thumbnails in the game

Seeing the thumbnail for kitty0706's 'Team Fabulous 2' made me smile.

There needs to be a never ever on tf2

Well game theory really did the episode complete about Luigi's dong

Dan Gheesling! One of my favorite twitch streamers 9:51

Last time I was this early emp was killing behind the meme

This idea of be yourself is so important today. Every thing else is simple after that. Don't be sheep and mob mental. It like saying be the best you.

I remember when the thumbnail was just the exact middle of the video so you had to put a frame in.

He used DAN GHEESLING the man, the myth, America's favorite big brother winner.

Emp watches AsumSaus? He truly is a man of culture.

Thumbnails are Memes in disguise.

I got distracted by the fact that CinemaSins interviewed Ray William Johnson when he made his first million.

Me reading this title: I’m looking at you Reddit thumbnails

Vsauce had a blank white thumbnail and he got over a 10 million views on that video

The thumbnails are probably the most important thing on youtube.
Mostly by adding clickbait titles and thumbnails to make you click on the video basically it's expectations and reality.

That endcard... I don’t know what to say...

It’s very... Internet?

You're probably not gonna see this but i gotta say, you're not the same guy i used to hate back in 2016/17, i used to think of you as a typical toxic 4chan user but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, i just saw your BTM defense video and that's a massive improvement if I've ever seen one

Also there's those thumbnails that have lewd pictures of video game characters

0:13 Oh shit I've been found out

The irony is me just clicking this because I read EmpLemon in the notification menu and went ''hey this will be a good time'' and not seeing the thumbnail at all, cause when you see stuff in the notification, the first information is the avatar icon, the name, the name of the video and then the thumbnail (Ps. I'm also pretty blind so that thumbnail on the notification menu might aswell be an actual blur)

So I think there's also a difference between the notification system and the main page stuff.

I love how team fabulous 2 is in the video and when i look at my reccomended i see team fabulous 2 is there.

Ive decided to just start taking pictures of my poop as thumbnails

looks like they made yet another change to the like dislike button. looks like you were right

4:33 paint memes look like ass though, there's no way to have text border in paint, if you caption a meme in paint it'll stick out like a sore thumb on whatever you uploaded that meme to.

shrek has swag is the peak of thumbnail culture

lol you should do a full video on nine inch nails downward spiral for april fools or something

Throwing shade on Dan Gheesling for being unrecognizeable lol

Was this video copyright claimed? Album covers do that, i heard.

2:03
God I still miss Rick May even to this day. :,(

2:52 i've never seen him bald

I keep seeing that Red Herring thumbnail and every time I think it's Arin Hanson.

Kitty0706, a content creator ahead of our time.

Nerrel is the God of Thumbnails

Needs more red circles and/or arrows

changing the thumbnail really boosts the views, I got 10x the existing views in a matter of weeks on a video

way to call me out like that, I'm just trying to keep history alive

Everyone talking about thumbnails and here I am just thinking, "Is that the music from Gran Turismo 4? Nice"

I always put a lot of effort into em and no one clicks

Nerrel's Majora's Mask thumbnail is the BEST.

3:17, would that image not be considered, you know, that thing.

Not gonna lie your thumbnail definitely worked lamo

Mario Paint theme music......... WHAT A LEGEND lol

You’re telling me that THE Dan Gheesling, winner of Big Brother has a meaningless face??

I just pick one the the youtube generated ones from the video. Thumbnail will always represent the video if the thumbnail is the video.

Damn, showcased AsumSaus...

Can die happy now

Incredibly good take.

i gave a 7 second video on my channel from a couple years ago that had like 13 views a thumbnail and it got 50 views in a week

Love the Mario kart music at 12:30

EmpLemon, your favourite youtuber’s favourite youtuber😋

god i fucking love this channel

2:30 idk why I found that so funny

See the negative space option doesn't work for those of us who use dark theme

weird how u watch the biggest and smallest youtubers including Nerrel, Jerma, and Dan Gheesling

80% of the reason I clicked onthos video was the thumbnail.

To the whole changing thumbnail thing, I clicked on a Radio TTS video because it had a new thumbnail several times, not that I didn't know it was the old ivd

I almost spit out my Captain Crunch 4:40

0:04 thats actually good tho

9:50 you better give Dan “Winner of Big Brother” his proper respect, egghead >:[

the wingdings translates to DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Well the changing thumbnail thing is real. I speak as a viewer though but I've noticed in the past, I see a video on my feed, don't clic it cuz I'm not that interested then time goes by and see the same video again with different thumbnail and I do notice the video more, increases the chances of me clicking it

I clicked on this video
75% because of the title
25% because of the thumbnail.

I love the ghostbuster in the background lmao

9:52
MY BOI DANIEL GHEEZLING
Does that mean emp is a vod boy too?

Isn't the downward spiral an hour long album tho lol
Edit:googled it says the album runtime is 65 minutes an some change

Seeing that kitty0706 video brings back good memories. I really miss that guy.

I know Im just a small YTP maker but I recently changed the thumbnail for my Mr Bean one and it's views doubled in a month.

I love Minimme's thumbnails

Oh wow you showed TheRumChum's Monsters on Acid too, he is my favourite Pooper!

dude you are criminally under subbed

I'm so sorry Emp I will be right back after I watch "My first time Jizzing"

Hi first video of yours I ever watch. I think it was suggested to me because of the Bob Ross in the thumbnail. Also didn't care for the green Simpsons, but stayed for the Gran Turismo soundtrack.

Was Majora's mask 3d a BAD REMAKE? (N64 comparison and review)

Stimpee is #1 in the thumbnail game

Sadly enough, I can't customize my own because I nEeD a CoMpUtEr To Do ThAt!

last time i was this early monetization wasnt even the main point of youtube

Love that slick dan gheesling reference

EmpLemon 2: The Ray of Khan

Wondering how long you're going to sneak in references to your AsumSauce channel lol