Newsletter
Google-owned YouTube is testing a new feature for content creators that lets them upload and select from multiple thumbnails to add to videos, Android Police reports. The change is intended to allow content creators to figure out which thumbnails work best for their videos.
More specifically which thumbnails engage the viewer more by getting them to click. YouTube is calling this new feature Test & Compare. And has given a breakdown of how it works in a video on the company’s Creator Insider channel.
Creators upload three thumbnails with a video, then after a certain period of time they can choose a “winning thumbnail” to use as the permanent one. Inside of YouTube Studio creators can see which out of the three performed the best. This is based on the highest percentage of watch time. Creators will then be able to choose the winner. They can also choose to do a new test if they feel it’s needed. The feature is already out in the wild. As YouTube confirms it’s been testing it with a small number of creators over the past few months.
YouTube plans to roll out its thumbnails testing to more creators soon
The testing pools is small now, but it won’t be that way for much longer. YouTube says that in the coming months, a few thousand creators will get access to a beta version of this feature.
There’s no timeline here, so “the coming months” is a pretty broad window. But since it’s a beta YouTube is more than likely handpicking creators to add to the testing. So when does everyone get access? YouTube says it’s looking to roll this out more broadly sometime next year. Which means it won’t be available to a much wider audience for quite some time. YouTube does acknowledge though that this is been a top-requested feature so it wanted to let creators know that it’s being worked on.