New Feature: A/B Testing Thumbnails!

This is it, the one you’ve ALL been waiting for.

Today we’re officially announcing/rolling out the ability to A/B split test your video thumbnails! That is, you can display each viewer a random thumbnail when your page loads. We’ll then let you know which thumbnail is most likely to be clicked!

You might be asking, “why has this never been done? I’ve spent $20,000 on video content only to *guess* at which thumbnail is most likely to be clicked”.

The answer is simple – most legacy video platforms aren’t designed to interface directly with the thumbnail on page load.

Why the heck would you use A/B testing?

You want your video seen, use it to determine which thumbnail generates the most clicks!
You’re playing around with different site designs, which thumbnail looks best with the design and motivates people to watch?
You’re experimenting with multiple, customized play buttons (try this by turning off our default play button)

The video below – is currently showcasing 5 different thumbnails at random to new visitors. Which Thumbnail do you see?

Questions

Q: What if someone sees a different thumbnail every-time they visit the site? Won’t that confuse them?

A: Our engineers have worked some magic to ensure that individual browsers all see the same thumbnail

Q: How many thumbnail variations do you support?

A: We currently support 8, there’s no particular reason for the cap other then we didn’t want to over-complicate.

So how does it work?

As with all things Vidyard, it’s easy-peasy to split test your thumbnails.

1) Select “Splash Screens” From the Player Customization menu

2) Select “Split-Test” From the Upper right

3) Select from the Automatically Generated Splash Screens and/or upload your own! In this case, I’ve uploaded 3 and selected 5. I’ve selected differing Cloud arrangements (light to dark) as well as some of our own graphics (uploaded from my machine by clicking *browse*).

4) Scroll down to Step 2 in order to configure the split test probabilities. The probabilities define how often the selected Thumbnail will appear. Clicking the little locks will set a specific probability for a specific thumbnail. In this case I’ve chosen even probabilities for each thumbnail.

5) Click “Update Splash Screens” to save your configuration. The player embeded in this post (above) will now show one of 5 splash screens at random to each visitor!

Is that it? Not exactly! After a set-period of time, return to the dashboard to determine which Challenger is the most successful at generating clicks! This data is located just below the probability selector (Step 3 – Choose a Winner). I’ll be sure to make another post next week to look at and review the data!

If you have any questions, feel free to call or reach out to us on Twitter! We’re always available 🙂

Hop on over to Vidyard and take it for a spin!

@michaellitt

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