The face-focused thumbnails have become a widespread trend on YouTube. But new creators are confused about which type of face to show on their YouTube video thumbnail. Should they look happy, sad or shocked? What type of pose should they make? Kapwing teamed up with a marketing agency NeoMam Studios to find the answers to these questions.
They used AI facial recognition technology to categorize common thumbnail faces of biggest YouTube creators. The thumbnails were categorized into six groups: sad, surprised, fearful, happy, confused and calm. These categories were then calculated according to the highest to lowest thumbnail faces used. MrBeast is the one who started the trend of face-focused thumbnails and study found that his thumbnails contained all six emotion categories. PewDiePie and KSI were also among the YouTubers with thumbnails in all categories.
Some creators were also using only some specific face focused thumbnails. For instance, all of Mark Rober’s thumbnails are calm and happy, while Ludwig’s thumbnails show happiness, confusion and fear. Overall, most of the thumbnails by YouTube creators were showing happy emotions, with surprise and happiness being used mostly. Calm faces in the thumbnails came at third spot, followed by sadness. The Stoke Twins also frequently used fearful emotions in their thumbnails.
It was thought that angry or sad thumbnails would get more views, cofounder of Kapwing Eric Lu said. But it turns out that happy or surprised thumbnails gets the most clicks and views. It means that viewers like consuming positive content.
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