YouTube is making it easier for creators to choose the right thumbnail

The process of choosing the all-important thumbnail for your latest YouTube video could soon be a lot easier. YouTube says it’s conducting preliminary testing of a feature it’s calling “test and compare,” which lets creators upload up to three thumbnails for a single video and watch YouTube use it behind the scenes. Lets see which one performs best.

In YouTube says it’s currently testing the feature with “a few hundred creators,” but plans to roll out the beta version to thousands more people in the coming months before a wider launch next year.

YouTube says that the functionality, often referred to as A/B testing, has been a “top requested feature” by its users. A video’s thumbnail plays a key role in attracting viewers, which means there’s pressure to make it as eye-catching as possible. A screenshot of an in-development YouTube feature showing how its test and compare feature will report each thumbnail’s “watch time” as a percentage after completing A/B testing.

over the past few years third-party tools The ad has come out that lets users A/B test youtube thumbnails and I’ve seen creators polled by his twitter followers Try to find out which image might perform better. Youtuber Jay Foreman said, “Thumbnail science is extremely important to please the algorithms, and I need all the help and advice and do’s/don’ts.” written with a similar survey Last year.