YouTube Thumbnails As A Genre

     Ever gone on YouTube and saw a video that peaked your interest just by the photo of it alone? Well, YouTube thumbnails have been designed in order to achieve that. The purpose of having these thumbnails is to appeal to a larger audience that searches up for a specific topic, resulting in an increase in viewership, audience retention, and much more to the creators of the content produced. These thumbnails are usually represented with large text, bold colors, characters, or something that is related to the topic being presented to the audience; sometimes all of these and more would be implemented. A screenshot from the video can also be used in thumbnails to give the audience a sneak peek of what is being contained in the video. Even though these are all different styles of thumbnails on YouTube, the most important aspect of them are: relevancy; how relevant the image is to the actual video itself.

     Introducing the idea of relevance, in relation to YouTube thumbnails, by creating a thumbnail that not only appeals to the audience, but also to the topic they are looking for can help them focus their attention to what is contained in that video. Remember, the main purpose of making thumbnails is to succeed in the following, but not limited to impressions, audience retention, watch time, etc. The more the video has to offer with the answer the audience wants, the longer they will continue watching the video. You wouldn’t want to have a viewer click on the video and find out it doesn’t contain what they are looking for, then click right off. This causes a distrust from the audience towards you as a content creator and sparks up a phrase known as “clickbait”. By doing this action, it can potentially ruin your relationship with the audience due to the fact of not offering the content that they are seeking for, by the image presented. Adding on, the effect of not having loyal viewers watching your content can be very detrimental to your content and the perception of your image on the platform.

Continuing on, thumbnails have followed specific patterns throughout the years to appeal to all sorts of audiences. One of those patterns involves “color”. Bright colors such as yellow, blue, red, green, etc., as well as complementary colors or those opposite of each other, have a tendency to draw in viewers towards what is being shown in the thumbnail. This brings focus to the main subject of the video as well as anything that is around them. To further develop this idea, with the audience hooked onto the image of the video, it will result in them wanting to find out more. Other colors such as black or white may be more difficult for your video to stand out from all of the others but in some cases, content creators may use those colors as a form of branding through niche or aesthetics. Moving on, another pattern would be the implementation of text with it being around a few words to represent the video itself. By adding text, it gives the audience a glimpse of what the video is about just by the use of a few words. As stated previously, the audience must be able to click onto the video based on what has been put on the thumbnail.

Discussing what is produced in a video can vary from one creator to the next. On YouTube, there are many different topics that are set out by people and some examples could be gaming, makeup, sports, guides, blogs, etc. Some of these creators follow either an assortment of different topics on the platform, or a specific topic. Branding plays a huge role on YouTube as creators are known from the content they choose to produce while offering different types of needs to the audience. These needs can involve tutorials (how-to guides), news or information, entertainment, education, etc. This all depends on the audience and to whom the content is being produced towards. These creators follow different “niches” and “aesthetics” in order to “stand out from the crowd”, allowing them to be recognized for what they put out on the Internet. Retracing back to the use of YouTube thumbnails, they fall into this category with a purpose to “impress” the audience with the contents of the video as well as any other content produced by the content creator. Having thumbnails that follow consistency encourages branding for both the person making their videos and the topics they are shining light upon.

To conclude what has been stated, the YouTube platform uses imagery to appeal to viewers based on what they searched for. With thumbnails that consist of relevancy and visual representations of videos made on the platform, the content produced in the process are stepping stones to further develop the ideas hidden behind what the eye focuses its attention towards. This is what makes thumbnails on YouTube more complex than what is seen by the audience.

Works Cited: