At RDC, we announced thumbnail personalization to help users discover your game by automatically showing the most relevant thumbnail to each user on Home. We’re getting ready to launch this feature in early November and wanted to give you a heads-up now so that you can:
Prepare new thumbnails to take advantage of this feature as soon as it launches.
Sign up for our live stream on Monday, November 4 at 1 pm PST for a live walkthrough and Q&A. (we’ll also upload the recording after).
During our experiment phase, experiences saw an average +8.5% increase in qualified play through rate (qPTR), with some seeing +50% increase.
Below is a quick preview of how the feature works and some best practices for creating thumbnails.
How thumbnail personalization will work at launch
In your thumbnails page on Creator Hub, you’ll see a new Home Page tab.
On this tab, you can upload new thumbnails and then set up to 5 thumbnails as “active.” Setting 2 or more thumbnails to active will turn personalization on.
Initially, traffic will be split evenly across your active thumbnails. Thumbnails with higher qualified play through rates (qPTR) for specific user groups will automatically receive more traffic from that group. After a few hours, you’ll see per-thumbnail stats in the table and charts.
The algorithm will continue to show the best thumbnail to each user over time while keeping minimal traffic to explore other thumbnails. You can add or remove thumbnails at any time, but we recommend keeping a diverse set of thumbnails set to active so that personalization can continue. Also, your winning thumbnail can change over time as user preferences change.
As mentioned in the Discovery vision post, we are building state-of-the-art algorithms and UI that personalize Discovery for every user. Hence our goal with thumbnail personalization is to automatically show the best thumbnail to each user so that you can focus on building your experience.
Here’s an example of what the new thumbnails page looks like in Creator Hub :
Note: Data shown is illustrative. As an example, this experience tested 5 thumbnails and found that 2 performed significantly better than the rest. Every hour, the personalization algorithm sends more traffic to the thumbnails with higher qualified play through rates.
Best practices for creating new thumbnails
Here are a few best practices to keep in mind when preparing your new thumbnails:
Showcase your gameplay or content update. We reward thumbnails that match what users can expect to play in your game. Avoid click-bait thumbnails that’ll lead to quick bounces.
Use high quality 16:9 images. Use 16:9 aspect ratio and 1920x1080 resolution to ensure your thumbnail looks sharp on any platform.
Keep your target audience in mind. Consider what resonates most with them. Get qualitative feedback on new thumbnails from your player community.
Maintain a consistent visual theme. Use consistent colors and styles to help users recognize your experience across your thumbnails and icons.
Don’t be afraid to test and experiment. New perspectives like a first person view of your experience could work well.
Check out our RDC analytics session for some real examples of the impact of thumbnail updates.
Interested in learning more?
Sign up for our live stream on Monday, November 4th, at 1 pm PT / 4 pm ET to see a live demo of thumbnail personalization and ask us any questions you have live.
And don’t forget to get your new thumbnails ready for our launch in November.
This seems like a really interesting idea, hopefully it does not get abused with click bait thumbnails, but that’s really my only concern. Perhaps the algorithm can avoid promoting such games, and if that is going to be the case, then great!
Correct me if I am wrong, shouldn’t thumbnail sizes be 1920x1080?
You’re right, it should be 1920x1080 - just updated the post. Regarding the clickbait concern, we 100% agree and will have more to share about that soon.
I must say, I am super excited for this feature. It has been something I have wanted ever since I saw other content creation platforms doing this. Being able to see statistics per thumbnail is so helpful as well, and I’m glad that we will be able to select which thumbnails we want to use. Big thanks to the team that is working on this!
We’ve been lucky enough to be given the privilage to test this out on SCI - Pathos III over the past few days. Despite being a fair bit smaller than other experiences using the feature, we’ve still seen some significant qPTR improvements with it - and that improvement has been increasing continously since we started using the feature.
Definitely excited to see how big of an impact this makes when it reaches a full rollout!
Currently Beta testing this feature with Harbor Havoc and (unsurprisingly) it’s a game-changer, finding winning thumbnails has gone from a risky multi-day endeavor to a much safer automated system that yields results within a few hours.
Great feature only 12 years too late but better late than never. Just call it AB testing tho, personalization makes no sense I thought it was AI generated thumbnails per user initially
“With it you can upload multiple thumbnails, and we’ll automatically target the right one to the right user using factors like age and genre, and you’ll also be able to review performance metrics and figure out which user cohorts those thumbnails resonated with best”
Thank you! I think this is the most exciting new feature of the year.
Would be interested in seeing breakdowns in performance for impression CTR vs. experience detail CTR, and potentially even different personalization for both.
I would assume an “eye-catching”’ thumbnail would perform better in Homepage Recommendations, but something like actual gameplay/screenshots might result in more plays once the user is on the experience detail page. If the data reflects this, would love to see it as a feature.
