Interesting, I wasn't sure at first how it was adjusting the title, but it seems like it lower cases it. Interesting demo, but I think you could do better by just aggressively not clicking on videos like that to begin with. I never see that style of click bait anymore, as long as I'm logged in.
Luckily they can't send different thumbnails to different viewers. Yet.
Veritasium actually did an interesting episode recently about how the major YouTubers optimize their titles and thumbnails using real time data now to figure out what works to go more viral. And apparently there's a convergence on "shocked" face.
LinusTechTips had mentioned that he did an A/B test with "no YouTube face" and "with YouTube face" finding it had a significant impact on the number of viewers.
I suppose we're hard wired to look for shocked expressions.
I was having a conversation about this with a friend last night. I saw a video on plastic CPUs on his smart TV's recommendations, and searched the topic instead of clicking on it because I didn't want to encourage what I called 'Reddit face'.
Is there some Youtube thumbnail generator or a guide? They all literally look the same. Have the same kind of thick white outline around the person and they seem to use the same fonts too.
Even somewhat respectable channels do this thumbnail 'hack' because they claim they've A/B tested it and the "I am yelling loudly" look perform better. Possibly because more children click the thumbs than they otherwise would.
But, having watched the 'crate challenge' that is hot on IG and TT, I'm thinking my thumbnail comment might be giving adults too much credit.
freetube client allows you to control how thumbnails are displayed; default - youtube one or manual fetch frame from beginning, mid or end of the video
My version of not-logged in (which is the default) is far from that. It's regional - but again, unless you logoff on purpose, the selection is heavily based on your choices of 'creators'
The fact that Netflix can adaptively adjust their clickbait to suit each user is pretty stunning though. That's definitely a step beyond "one thumbnail to rule them all".
The most common thumbnail I see is a picture of someone looks like they are blown away with their hands on their head and their mouth wide open.