4 ms·
Sebastian and Linus Media Group seem to be pretty frank and open about a lot of this: see for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA&list=PL8mG-Rk
by leoc 6y ago
Sebastian and Linus Media Group seem to be pretty frank and open about a lot of this: see for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA&list=PL8mG-RkN2uTxJiNGHnLrb-i-XP6s3y87K&index=6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzRGBAUz5mA&list=PL8mG-RkN2u... on putting up gurning thumbnails and navigating the YT algorithm (and that whole playlist, including a revenue breakdown https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8&list=PL8mG-RkN2uTxJiNGHnLrb-i-XP6s3y87K&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t73wXF8IF-8&list=PL8mG-RkN2u... ), the Gamers Nexus video on LTT's production process https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOBFu-mYpw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdOBFu-mYpw and the coverage LTT regularly lavishes on its own production setup and process, from a nearly-12m video about the awkwardness of ingesting video from their new 12K cameras https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfGBQZUSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pocfGBQZUSI to seemingly quite genuine fly-on-the-wall coverage of temporarily losing their data to a RAID failure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSrnXgAmK8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSrnXgAmK8k . Obviously you always have to take anyone's self-presentation with a grain of salt. But they're certainly not hiding the fact that there's a more grounded reality behind the "on" personas.
- kortex 6y agoTIL the word "gurn". Never once heard it before and even just now autocorrect tried to insist it was "turn". The description is indeed apt for what I see in a lot of thumbnails. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurn
- mprev 6y agoIt's competitive in the UK: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/41282197 https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/41282197
- globular-toast 6y agoIt's also quite well-known to users of certain psychoactive drugs.
- motogpjimbo 6y agoI wonder how many potential views he loses due to his gurning? I've never watched any of his videos despite YT constantly recommending them to me because I've got a personal rule about never clicking on a thumbnail that has a picture of someone pulling a face or which has a clickbait title.
- jerrre 6y agoI would assume it's a net win for those people to have those thumbnails.
- rcxdude 6y agoFar less than he gains from doing the same, which is the point.
- corobo 6y agoYou are in a tiny minority of users. If this didn't work they wouldn't do it. If I can be honest nobody wants the high maintenance viewer with personal rules about this and that little thing anyway. It's exhausting and they definitely use adblock haha
- Jleagle 6y agoUnfortunately, you're the only one missing out by skipping dumb thumbnails. Obviously a lot of dumb thumbnails have dumb videos, but not all.
- TheRealSteel 6y agoI agree with your principles but I'm not strong enough to stick to them. I just installed the addon YouTube Clickbait Remover, which uncapitalizes titles and replaces thumbnails with a frame from the video.
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoSome people will stick to watching because of the content, others will actually click on them because of the thumbnails. As they explained (and I'm sure his is the most cited one), it's a simple numbers game. Min-maxing Youtube, so to speak. Or growth hacking, to put it in hip startup crowd terminology. I mean the HC community and YC companies have no qualms about discussing and promoting the best practices for a good landing page, every time someone comes in to promote their product there will be unsolicited advice about that. It's the same thing, but instead of saying "you should put caps in your title and have an expressive face in the thumbnail" it'll be about the content on the landing page like "you need a screenshot".