Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
YouTube is finally rolling out the ability for creators to test and compare how multiple video thumbnails perform, the company announced on Tuesday. The feature was first announced last June, but at the time, it was only available to a few hundred creators.
With the new tool, which YouTube calls “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” creators can test up to three thumbnails for a video. “YouTube will show your chosen thumbnails evenly across your video’s viewers, and then will select a winning thumbnail based on which one generates the most watch time share,” according to a post bylined from “Meaghan” on the YouTube team. (This idea is also known as A / B testing.)
Creators will be able to see data about how thumbnails performed, though “it may…