Thumbnails of people making stupid faces or exaggerated faces have become quite common. And for some channels, this may make perfect sense. If your channel is humorous, if the content involves ridiculous acts, this can be, this can be completely on brand and seamless flow from the thumbnail to your content.
But I think many other creators are misapplying their, this technique and they’re undermining. What they’re trying to accomplish with their channel, and they’re really harming and tarnishing their brand. One problem is this technique is somewhat dated in that many people are now applying this technique.
So whereas before a shocked face or a dramatic face stood out from the crowd. Now it’s a part of the crowd. Another problem is this can be hurting your credibility. And so you may have content that’s informative in nature or more serious in nature. And having these thumbnails really doesn’t align with that content.
And so you could be losing out on sponsorships because people don’t want to be associated with a gimmicky act. And you could have the opposite effect of what you’re intending. Obviously the intent here. It’s to get more click throughs to get more views, but what could end up happening is you don’t get the, you don’t get the click throughs from other demographics.
You may pull in a younger demographic, but not the older demographic, or people may just stay away from your videos altogether. Because they don’t take you seriously. And so this can end up happening, especially over time. It’s not going to be one video that undoes everything you’ve done, but when you start to look at your channel and you look at your brand and you see all the content you’ve created.
And the covers for your content, are you making stupid faces over and over again? It can really start to add up and have a detrimental effect on your channel. So I think we will see this reverse to some degree. And like I said, for some channels, it makes sense, but I think many people are misapplying this now dated technique and it really ends up hurting their channel.