Hi Creators,
Today, we’re excited to launch thumbnail personalization to help you attract more users by showing the most relevant thumbnail to each user on Home. As we’ve shared before:
Experiences with thumbnail personalization saw an average +8.5% increase in qualified play through rate (qPTR) with some even seeing a +50% increase.
Additionally, here are some quotes from our early testers:
- “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 in a few hours”* – @Life_blox
- “This feature has completely changed how we approach thumbnail testing. We can now confidently test a handful of thumbnails without fear that things will fall apart.”* – @ScriptOn
- “It’s really really really really cool.” - @asimo3089
Watch our video walkthrough or keep reading to understand how you can set up thumbnail personalization:
How to set up thumbnail personalization
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In Creator Hub, go to your Thumbnails page under Creations > Places. There, you’ll see a new Home Page tab.
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On the Home Page tab, you can upload new thumbnails and then set up to 5 thumbnails as “active.” When you set 2 or more thumbnails to active, personalization will turn on.
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Initially, impressions will be split evenly across your active thumbnails. Every hour, thumbnails with higher qualified play through rates (qPTR) for a user group will automatically receive more impressions from that group. After a few hours, you’ll see per-thumbnail stats on the page.
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The algorithm will continue to show the best thumbnail(s) to each user group while allocating some impressions to continue testing other thumbnails. You can add or remove thumbnails at any time, but it’s important to keep a diverse set of thumbnails active to let personalization adapt to changing user trends.
Note: Data shown above is illustrative. As an example, this experience tested 5 thumbnails and found that 2 performed better than the rest for ages 18+ and <18 respectively. Every hour, personalization allocates more impressions to the thumbnails with higher qPTR.
Keep multiple thumbnails active instead of picking one winner
To get the most out of this product, it’s important to:
Personalization uses multi-arm bandit (instead of A/B testing) to help you find multiple winning thumbnails in hours and to respect each user group’s preferences.
For example, if you removed the green thumbnail below too early (e.g., at the red line), you’ll have missed out on additional impressions because it turned out to be the second-best performing thumbnail.
As a rule of thumb, we recommend testing multiple new thumbnails with any major game or content update and then largely leaving your thumbnails alone until your next update.
Start personalizing your thumbnails today!
Hopefully you’ve made great thumbnails already after reading our preview post of this feature. Now’s a great time to go to your Thumbnails page in Creator Hub to start personalization. For more best practices, please read our documentation.
FAQs
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What’s the difference between thumbnail personalization and A/B testing?
- Personalization uses multi-arm bandit which helps you get results much faster than traditional A/B testing. Specifically, it lets you:
- Find multiple winning thumbnails in hours instead of weeks.
- Respect diverse user preferences by showing the best thumbnail to each user.
- Automatically adapt to changing user preferences and platform trends.
What metric does personalization optimize for?
- Personalization optimizes for qualified play through rate, which tracks the percent of users who intentionally engage with your experience (as opposed to accidental clicks or quick bounces). A “qualified play” refers to a user’s intentional engagement with your experience, as opposed to accidental clicks or quick bounces. It is an early signal of how likely users are to retain in your experience.
If I start personalization, does it run on all of my traffic?
- Yes the algorithm starts by splitting traffic evenly across your thumbnails. However, it learns quickly and sends more traffic to the winning thumbnail(s) within hours. Many top games have seen positive results with personalization.
Does personalization work for smaller games?
- If your game has less than 1,000 daily active users, you may not see meaningful results with personalization. Meanwhile, here are some of our recommendations for finding and nurturing your audience.
I turned on personalization and one thumbnail is clearly winning, should I remove the other thumbnails?
- We recommend always having multiple thumbnails active to get the most out of personalization. If one thumbnail is clearly winning, try to wait a few days to see if trends change. If not, you may want to test that thumbnail against a new set of thumbnails.
