Is It Worth Adding New Thumbnails To Old Videos?

In this blog, we’ll explore how updating thumbnails can revitalize video engagement, using Ryan Trahan’s “I Fixed 100 Famous Logos” video as a case study.

The thumbnail is the first thing a potential viewer sees, making it a crucial element in the decision to click or scroll past a video. When a video’s view count starts to plateau, revisiting the thumbnail design can often boost the viewership of an old video. Ryan Trahan took advantage of this with his “I Fixed 100 Famous Logos” video, where the initial thumbnail didn’t fully communicate the video’s concept, causing its performance to stagnate.

He then tested a new thumbnail about a week after uploading. However, this new design still didn’t deliver the desired results. He realized that it wasn’t effectively conveying the premise of his video - changing iconic logos.

One month later, he took a more strategic approach by implementing A/B testing to measure which thumbnail best conveyed the idea of the video.

He also included a third thumbnail to help show whether it was the idea of a car that was not intriguing to viewers when conveying the premise of the video.

One month later, he changed the thumbnail to the one that led to the most views during the A/B testing period - which is the thumbnail we see on his channel today!

The following day, he did another A/B test to have more data on which of the three thumbnails performed the best.

The test ultimately showed that the Starbucks thumbnail performed the best, so he continued to include that one.

Another example of a different video is in the following video, where the thumbnail was changed on April 6th, which led to the video picking up a while after. And then was developed in an A/B test in May - just as seen in the purple graph below.