The day I realized I was beefing up thumbnails too much

Honestly, I spent like 2 years cranking saturation and contrast on my thumbnails until faces looked like wax figures. This week I posted a video with a plain screenshot by accident, no editing at all, and it got 30% more clicks than my other stuff. That made me dig into my analytics and see that my old edited ones had way higher bounce rates. Ngl, I think viewers were clicking in out of confusion, then leaving fast. Has anyone else noticed a drop in watch time after you tone down the clickbait look?

1 comments

1 Comment

phoenix_singh255d agoTop Commenter

Saw a study saying autoplay views spike with loud thumbnails but retention tanks, so your numbers line up.