People say “Don’t judge a book by its cover” but in reality, videos are judged by their covers — thumbnails.
A thumbnail should pique the viewer’s interest. After all, the more your viewers watch, the more likely you can retain their viewership.
It’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words. But are your thumbnails speaking the right words?
This guide will help you understand the secret of creating the perfect thumbnails for your videos.
What are Video Thumbnails?
A video thumbnail is a small clickable image that showcases, represents, and guides users to a video.
When a person is browsing and trying to pick what will keep them occupied for the next few hours or to find whatever specific video they’re looking for, the thumbnail is the first thing they’ll notice.
Thumbnails make it easy for viewers to choose what they want to see because they provide a quick overview of the video’s content
The purpose of a thumbnail is to spark the curiosity of viewers and capture their eyeballs.
A good video thumbnail must:
- Communicate the content of your video effectively.
- Make the video intriguing enough for the viewer to click and watch.
Do Thumbnails Matter?
If a video is not gaining any views, it is not adding any value to your content library.
In a highly saturated VOD market, viewers are spoilt for choices. Thus making a strong first impression is crucial for engaging and retaining your audience.
Apart from creating thumbnails only for videos, it would be easier for viewers to select if there are custom thumbnails for shows, playlists, seasons, and other video groupings.
Creating thumbnails that stand out could help you showcase your content ideally to your viewers.
How to Create Perfect Thumbnails?
Although there is no science to creating a perfect video thumbnail, there are a few tips to craft thumbnails that will significantly raise the number of clicks and views on your videos.
Choice of colors
Use a bright, vibrant, clear image that looks great in both large and small sizes. The image should be clearly related to the content in your video
Choice of fonts
Choose a font that is readable and clear. It’s ideal to use a lesser text in a large font. Also, make sure the font color chosen is readable in the image background. If not choose a different color or add a small rectangular text background.
Background Image matters
Use a background image that expresses the mood of the video content without being too loud to distract from the rest of the page. After all, a thumbnail should not out shadow the other thumbs on the page.
Nevertheless, the image should be striking. It should catch people’s attention, and urge them to click on the video and watch it all the way through.
Thumbnail Resolution
Creating thumbnails of different ratios for each screen is the best approach for creating an ideal thumbnail.
A 16:9 thumbnail would be an ideal choice for a viewer selecting your videos on a smart TV. When it comes to smartphones 4:3 and 3:4 images would be ideal depending on landscape or portrait view is used for the app. Some apps even use a square thumbnail based on their UI design.
When you launch your OTT platform, make sure your platform provider makes the process of uploading and using multiple thumbnails as simple as uploading the images in a go.
Apply Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is a visual composition thumb rule for designing visual representations. According to the rule, an image should be divided into nine equal portions by two evenly separated horizontal lines and two similarly spaced vertical lines, with significant compositional features positioned along these lines or their intersections.
Branding
Your thumbnails must clearly reflect your brand. This can be achieved by using consistent themes and fonts across your websites and apps.
Moreover, this consistency helps you connect with your viewers. Familiarity gives the feeling of trust. So doing this will help you build your brand, as well a loyal following.
- Fonts: Using the same font consistently improves familiarity. This naturally makes the user loyal to the brand.
- Patterns: The human brain is wired to find patterns. In fact, as we glance at a website or app, our brain seeks patterns automatically. Therefore, designing thumbnails with a consistent pattern/ template will make the user’s brain decide upon the content faster.
- Logo: It’s a known thing that video watermarking increases brand awareness and fights piracy. But adding logos on the thumbnails of exclusive content reminds your viewers that they will not be able to access this content elsewhere. This is a great way to improve audience retention
What not to do
So now that you know what to do to craft a perfect thumbnail for each of your videos, here are some things you shouldn’t do
Click baits
Click baits may spike your view count temporarily but they reflect badly on your brand. Moreover, people will not sit through the entire video once they have realized its a bait.
This reduces the value of your library and may even increase the churn rate.
Low-Resolution Images
Use images that are of the highest resolution possible while keeping the file size below 10 MB. A pixelated image doesn’t do justice to your amazing content
If you go for a larger image — above 10MB, it would increase the page load time and affect the user experience negatively. After all user experience is the key to the success of an OTT business.
Lessons to Learn From Netflix
Netflix knows you better than your best friend. This is because the streaming giant spends a great deal of time, effort, and money on machine learning and artificial intelligence.
If you are a niche streaming platform with a smaller budget — you need not go to this extent of customizing thumbnails.
However, you can create different types of thumbnails for different endpoints like websites, mobile apps, and CTV apps. Using different thumbnail templates for different genres like romance, comedy, action, etc would also add some value.
When Netflix was launched, the streaming service’s layout and interface looked a lot different than it does now. The thumbnails used back then were not personalized in any way.
Back then, Netflix used thumbnails from movie posters or DVD covers. It was mentioned in a Netflix technology blog in 2016 that their thumbnails at the time did not suit their layout.
The visuals did not appeal to everyone and were not as engaging as it is today.
Anyone who has used Netflix knows that the thumbnails we see are continuously changing, and the range of visuals we see now would not have been doable if they had simply used the movie posters.
Wrap Up
One of the most impactful easy changes you can make to improve your viewer engagement is to optimize your video thumbnails.
A thumbnail must grab the attention of the user instantly and make them watch it. This will improve not only viewer engagement and retention but also gradually increase user advocacy.
