A/B Testing
A/B testing, by my definition, is where you are trying to advertise one thing, but are showcasing it two different ways, and figuring out which way of advertising brings in the bigger audience over the other.
This helps in a big way because you may like sticking to one way of advertising something because that is always the way you have been doing things or it may just be because you like how it looks. In this instance, that's not always the case. Sometimes, different visuals appeal to the audience in different ways than one might think. For instance, I have been making YouTube videos now for almost 10 years and I've never stopped doing it because it is fun and exciting! There have been some times where I can't choose a thumbnail and I will end up having two different versions that I like, but can't choose by myself.
TubeBuddy
TubeBuddy, which is a great source to use on YouTube, gives some more insight into what you should look out for when doing an A/B test. One important thing to note that they mention is that even if you do an A/B test with the same video and different thumbnails, you will definitely get different results every time because every person is active different times of the day and different days of the week which will change your results a lot.
So, when making a YouTube thumbnail, each part of the uploaded video gets put into consideration: The title of the video, the description you added that most of the time describes what the video is about, and the tags. By tags, I mean short terms that a person searches for on the search bar in YouTube that helps them to find your videos.
Take into consideration, if you were a YouTuber that makes videos that are focused towards younger kids, you would want to make the thumbnails colorful and have the cartoon characters they love somewhere on the thumbnails too. If you were to make a different thumbnail that did not have anything at all that kids liked on it, and it was black and white, there is no way that they would want to click on a thumbnail that didn't make them happy.
You may have thought that I forgot to mention how A/B testing helps. Well, don't worry, that's where I'm getting to right now.
How Does This All Help?
The way A/B testing helps, whether it is for digital marketing advertisements on websites or if it is for comparing how different thumbnails bring in different audiences on your YouTube channel's videos, they both basically are doing the same thing. They are comparing CTRs. A CTR is short for click-through-rate and that is determined by how many people out there see your ad and click it because they want to learn more about your advertisement. CTRs are the most basic thing A/B tests start analyzing. The next thing they look for is where and when your audience is clicking your ad from. Every person, as I said before, is active during different times and days of the week, so the results will still differ every time. Say, if your main audience on YouTube watches your videos mostly on Friday nights at 5:00 PM CT, then that's when you would want to upload your videos because if you were to upload your videos any other time of the day or on a different day, even with the thumbnail that would have grabbed their attention, it won't bring in as many people because they are not expecting you to release anything on a different time schedule than what you have already planned.
Lastly, I know I have not mentioned this at all yet, but the last thing that gets put into consideration is the different traffic sources that your advertisements get put on. Not only do my YouTube videos send out notifications to my subscribers that I uploaded a video, but it also sends out a tweet to my Twitter too for anybody that follows me on there so they will also know I just uploaded new content. Continuing the A/B test through different sources, you will still get different results because your audience won't know what to think right away since they usually know how your thumbnails are designed and if they look different from usual, there will be less CTRs.
If you take all of these considerations into mind, then you will be able to successfully create an advertisement (or YouTube thumbnail) that will appeal to your audience the way you want.
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