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YouTube Blog

Thumbnails: Your video’s billboard on YouTube

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 01:00 PM PST

This is part of an ongoing series sharing tips from the YouTube Creator Playbook, a resource of best practices and tips you can start using on your channel and videos right away. As we move along in this series, some posts will be focused for more advanced YouTubers or YouTube Partners, like this week's tip.

With YouTube seeing 48 hours of video uploaded every minute, it's important to think how you can get your content seen by your regular and new viewers. In many cases, thumbnails are the first point of contact for your channel and a relevant thumbnail can make the difference for someone about to watch your (awesome) content.

Thumbnail Basics
During the upload process you have the opportunity to pick one of three frames from your video, or to upload a custom image file. For either option some basic best-practices can be applied:

1. Your thumbnail should look good, either scaled small or large
  • Faces work better and engage the audience
  • Visuals of the finished product work better than the process (e.g. show the cake, rather a picture of the batter)
  • Good thumbnails follow the same rule as good photographs - composition, contrast, and color count
Average Betty (food)

2. Choose images that accurately portray your video's content
  • Accurate thumbnails allow viewers to more easily browser and enjoy your content.
  • Misleading thumbnails lead to poor audience engagement and will hurt your channel's performance in the long run
  • Safeguards are in place to find and penalize channels that upload racy thumbnails—take a look at our Community Guidelines for more information
TMZ (entertainment)

3. For channels with the ability to upload custom thumbnails, upload a high quality image
  • There is no limit on pixel size (though 1280x720 is recommended)
  • The image file has to be less than 2MB
  • Accepted file formats: PNG, BMP, GIF, or JPEG
vsauce (multiple genres)
Thumbnail Placement
Thumbnails for your videos, playlists and even your channel are used throughout YouTube to promote your content. Some common placements for thumbnails are in search results, along the far right column of your video's Watch Page, on your Channel page, and in the video player after a video stops playing (the video's end card). Through these placements viewers can discover your videos, playlists, and channels.

You also should try YouTube Analytics to understand and measure the impact of these tips, and to learn more about thumbnail optimizations and other tips, check out the YouTube Creator Playbook.

Andres Palmiter, Audience Development Strategist, recently watched "Todd Kuiken: A prosthetic arm that 'feels'."

Ads that entertain: YouTube’s top spots of 2011

Posted: 21 Dec 2011 06:00 AM PST

Editor's note: Yesterday, we looked back on the "most viewed" YouTube videos of 2011. Today, we invited Advertising Age's Michael Learmonth to reflect on the most viewed video ads of the year.

We always knew people liked to watch the ads. At least some ads, like the great ones people talk about after the Super Bowl. Then YouTube came along in 2005 and brought with it the notion that ads can be great content that earn their way onto screens of all types, spread by consumers who vote, share, like, comment, blog, plus-one, or even create response videos or spoofs.

YouTube is the ultimate meritocracy for video, and advertisers are adapting to this world by creating content that people want to share. It's no surprise, for example, that among the top-10 most-watched ads on YouTube in 2011 are two Super Bowl ads.

Most watched video ads of the year (eliminating music videos and trailers):
1. VW - The Force
2. T-Mobile - Royal Wedding
3. Chrysler - Imported From Detroit
4. DC Shoes - Ken Block's Gymkhana Four: The Hollywood Megamercial
5. smartwater - Jennifer Aniston goes viral
6. Team Hot Wheels - The Yellow Driver's World Record Jump
7. Old Spice - Scent Vacation
8. Apple - Introducing Siri on iPhone 4S
9. Samsung - Unleash Your Fingers
10. adidas - D Rose: adiZero Rose 2 The Bull

What is surprising is that the majority of YouTube's top "ads" of 2011 (seems strange to call them that) never appeared on traditional TV at all.

Videos like T-Mobile's Royal Wedding, itself a spoof of the JK Wedding Dance, were made for the web and made to amuse, entertain, and to be passed around, as are mini-movies like DC Shoe's Gymkhana Four, stunts like Hot Wheel's record jump, and Old Spice's "Scent Vacation."

Even the two Super Bowl ads making the list, Chrysler and Volkswagen, were part of elaborate campaigns made to live significant lives on the web. In the past, advertisers treated their Super Bowl spots like state secrets, but Volkswagen posted "The Force" on YouTube two weeks before the Super Bowl last year, and had 10 million views before the game began. Chrysler took the opposite approach, but created a video four times the length of a typical TV ad, perfect for extended watching on the web after the game.

For brands, creating great content—advertainment, if you will—isn't just for big TV events like the Super Bowl anymore. Increasingly, advertisers and their agencies are focusing on the content and the strategy, and letting that content distribute itself. That doesn't mean they aren't doing traditional advertising. Indeed all of these campaigns were backed up by significant spending to seed and promote these videos on YouTube and elsewhere. But paid media only gets you so far. In the end, it doesn't matter if they paid $3 million for 30-seconds in the Super Bowl or much less to get the conversation started. In the end, it's the content that counts.

Michael Learmonth, Senior Editor for Advertising Age, recently watched, "Sesame Street: Smell Like a Monster."

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