Thumbnail review

[dusky abyss]

Video has been up for 5 days, very low CTR (1.5%). Any tips on how I can improve it?

[queen goblet]

Hmm, have you tried using tags?

[raw jasper]

Personally I really really like the thumbnail, very surprised the CTR isn't any higher. I'm having a similar sort of issue where my CTR is quite low but I think the thumbnail and title are good, still looking at what could be improved about it.

But in terms of the thumbnail, definitely is really good to me personally

[tropic eagle]

I think it's a good thumbnail too, but if you think it would help I could offer two changes. The easiest that might or might not have an affect is changing the arrow to red, just to draw attention to it since there is a significant amount of white on the thumbnail right now. The second change that could be made is switching out the picture of the movie poster to a recognizable character (Gandalf, Frodo, or Aragorn most likely). Having a character on the right hand side would draw people's eyes to the thumbnail, and would also be significantly larger than the movie poster that had to be shrunk to fit the thumbnail's dimensions

[dusky abyss]

Thanks for the tips, guys!

@tropic eagle I tried it with a yellow arrow, didn’t see much of a difference one way or another. I also tried it with Frodo instead of the poster, and I think it’s performing better with the poster? But I’ll try some more variations. Thanks again!

[final dust]

At a certain point, it’s just RNG until you find (or rather YouTube brings you too) your audience

[raw jasper]

Not sure how much I agree with that

If you have the right keywords in your description and title, and you talk about the right things in the video, YouTube is (from my experience) really really good at providing it to the right audience

[sturdy falcon]

I really like the thumbnail too and the premise feels strong enough to pique my interest.
I'd personally leave it that way, in your backlog, and cross fingers that it'll regain interest in 6 months when you post more videos and a new audience explores your backlog 🤔

[willow mountain]

Okay let me give my 2 cents of advice,

I see you know how to edit, it looks slick!

Now, I would zoom in more on the poster, the bottom will be cut off, thats okay, just make it at least half of the thumbnail (and keep it tilted like you did now

The arrow is relatively big, so you might size that down a bit to make more space for the poster.

The title, instead of 'Fellowship of the Ring', why not 'The Lord of the Rings'. I understand it's just about the first movie, but it will be better for search audience. People type in The Lord of the Rings

And now about the txt "Still Incredible in 2022?" Maybe change it to something more... exiting, something like "THEN VS NOW"

Yes it might be sounding like clickbait cos you are not comparing it to NOW as in the new Amazon LOTR series. But if you hold your promise in the video, it's okay.

You are comparing how LOTR was THEN, vs how it is NOW.

Anyways this title is just my suggestion, maybe you know something better to put in the thumbnail.

Also I see you didn't add any tags to the video, just add some tags like "The Lord of the Rings", "The Fellowship of the Ring", "Lord of the Rings Review" etc etc

[karmic nebula]

Your thumbnail looks awesome. Doesn't really need fixing imo. If anything, check your title b/c that could be what's detracting from it. So either title or there just isn't enough interest in the topic to warrant bigger appeal. Maybe just place more keywords in the description. But definitely keep going w/ those thumbnail designs cuz they look great

[vestal lance]

Make sure to add tags, and at the bottom of the description put a bunch of key words or at least use key words in the description (Wilbur and Tommyinnit have both recommended people do that as YouTube's algorithm uses key words in titles, tags and description to recommend videos)

[sturdy falcon]

Make sure to add tags
don't say that too loud on general or video-creators, you will anger people with those comments 🙂

[vestal lance]

What's wrong with that? I noticed their channel doesn't have many

[sturdy falcon]

It's something that has been repeatdly commented over there if you search the conversations that tags have been deemphasized and really are not necessary for growing, by people close to the Youtube team (and also for me in podcasts from Video Creators Hub)
#faq has an opinion on this:

What is most important? Title, description, thumbnail, or tags?
The content is always first, then the Title/Thumbnail, then description, then “Everything else”.

Tags specifically are not particularly useful, they are the lowest value user generated metadata (which is, itself, very low valued).

I personally don't care about this debate 🙂 it's just so you know

[vestal lance]

I mean,I said tags and keywords (because you can use all your keywords and just add them as tags just to be safe) but I don't see why that would 'anger' anybody. It's still something you can try to see if it helps 🤷‍♀️

[sturdy falcon]

Try to search the video-creators channel for tags mention and you will see what I mean by "anger"

[vestal lance]

I see what you mean. But I still don't see why people feel the need to get mad over it - it isn't like tags actually hurt viewership in the algorithm, they may not be that helpful but it's still something that could help even if very miniscule. But I'll keep that in mind incase someone tries to cancel me over it lmao