#Adblock one youtube thumbnails movie#

From a pure business perspective, it's probably okay to lose me, as I use adblock and/or youtube-dl to watch the videos, which means I don't really drive revenue. It's also anyone's guess on which group is better. You get a large influx of people that more than offsets the loss in the other audience pool. This kind of multi-modal behaviour can be very hard to capture with A/B test. In a way, I'm no different than the people who clicks on these videos, as I am also judging a book by its covers. It's a shame, because I know that the videos can be good, but the thumbnail is actively driving me away.

That said, I've noticed that I semi-consciously would avoid your video due to the icon which triggers an immediate reaction from me to stay away. I've seen a few of your videos and they're indeed very good. I know I belong in the latter group and will lose all interest in the video once I see the weird face and the edited icon. Maybe both your observation and HN is right: the distribution is multi-modal in the sense that (presumably) there is a large majority of people where the thumbnail works for and views the content, and then there is a small (and possibly vocal) minority of people who absolutely hate it and treat it as an anti-signal. I presume most people are asking themselves 'do I want to watch this' and deciding 'yes, this video looks interesting/entertaining/etc.' Maybe if the effect were small, like 1-2% I could believe its just a slight nudge due to psychological hacking, but the reported differences in the tens of percent and the extreme importance that seems to be placed by the algorithm indicates this is a major factor in peoples' decision making process. Instead you are presented with a small number of options and given unlimited time to choose, and the consequence of choosing a bad video is several minutes of wasted time. Maybe if you were presented with hundreds of options at once and had to click on something quickly, something that draws the eye might get that sort of response, but that's not how Youtube works. I presume everyone looks at all the video thumbnails I just go left to right, top to bottom. Videos are presented front and center, and you're only looking at a few at a time. It's not like videos are hidden in a background and the thumbnail needs to stand out in our field of vision. This explanation never really made sense to me. Then I started researching how much revenue I could have gained from that if that were a 'real' video with original content and ads thrown in. Then, when the new followers came (I gained a couple hundred during that time) I had a feeling of guilt because I think they somehow 'expect' similar clips from me from now on, and I would be letting them down (of course, totally irrational, I could care less of what some random people expect from me). That changed into a daily morning-routine of 'let's see how many people watched the video this night'. First, my phone started sending notifications like crazy (I turned them off pretty quickly). The most interesting part (for me) was the psychological effect this had on me.

#Adblock one youtube thumbnails movie#

I have absolutely no idea what crazy algorithm suddenly started recommending a 10-year-old video that is nothing more than a 10s snippet from a hollywood movie to millions and millions of people around the world. Then, it suddenly exploded, and now that video has just short of 1 million views, with a peak of ~60k or so per day. It was an old video, 10 years or so, and it only consisted of one 10 second scene of a movie that I found funny at that time, and that I shared with a couple friends. Then, earlier this year, one of my videos suddenly skyrocketed. I basically use YT to upload things that I want to share with some close friends. I have a YT account with, I think, 3 or 4 subscribers and maybe a dozen or two views on the 10-20 videos I ever uploaded.