YouTube will let creators test 3 thumbnails per video

Soon, YouTube will let creators A/B test up to three thumbnails on their long-form uploads.

As it announced at VidCon (and then re-announced on its Creator Insider channel), YouTube is in early testing of a feature it’s calling “Test & Compare.” It’ll let creators upload up to three separate thumbnails for one video. Those thumbnails will then (presumably) be shown to a roughly equal number of users across YouTube, and the creator will be able to see which one drove more clicks.

If and when they choose to go with one of the three thumbnails as the winning thumbnail, they’ll be able to switch to that one permanently.

YouTube says it’s experimenting with Test & Compare with a pool of a few hundred creators, but it plans to expand access to “a few thousand” in the coming months.

A full rollout will ideally come in 2024, but “we wanted to share that testing is underway, because we know this is a top-requested feature and it will help you make more data-driven decisions about your thumbnail strategy,” Lauren

, a program manager at YouTube and the producer of Creator Insider, said.

“We know you’ve been anxiously waiting for this capability, so thank you to our community for your patience and feedback along the way,” she added.

This will be the first time YouTube has helped creators A/B test thumbnails. It is possible to do it manually, and there are some third-party tools available, but the process can be disruptive, and sometimes requires a creator to upload multiple copies of the same video. This new system should make everything lot more seamless for creators trying to understand what thumbnails work best with their audience.