Thumbnails are a mandatory requirement for video delivery at Vevo, and an important feature that tells viewers what they're about to watch, intriguing users with a singular image to define your music video.
If you wish to update the thumbnail on a video, please either follow the steps below to upload a custom thumbnail or use our thumbnail optimization tool to choose a new thumbnail directly from the stills of your video.
Any thumbnail uploaded via Backstage will upload to YouTube with the official "Vevo" watermark applied!
Best Practices Guide for Uploading custom thumbnails:
- Make sure the thumbnail meets YouTube specs, so it displays at the highest quality on YouTube and our apps.
- Even when uploading a custom thumbnail, it's still important to choose a still from the music video. This ensures that the content of your video is properly represented by the thumbnail.
- Choose a clear and engaging image that is representative of the video's content.
- See examples of the thumbnails for some of our top performing videos below:
See thumbnails* for our original content below:
*While these stills may not be directly from the video, they show the viewer a clear image of the artist that will be performing, their name, and the name of the Vevo produced original content (DSCVR).
1. Search for the video you wish to update the thumbnail for
2. Click into the video
3. Go to the Thumbnail tab
4. Click on Upload
5. Drag in the new thumbnail image or click Or select file to choose an image from your computer
6. If needed drag the highlighted element to center the image
7. And/or use the bar at the bottom to zoom in or out on the image if desired
8. Once you are happy with the image placement click on Save
9. You will then be able to see the new thumbnail compared to the old thumbnail if you are happy with the change click publish in the top right-hand corner
10. You will be able to see a success message showing that this update has been sent
11. You will then see the status change to processing and the message "Recent changes to this video are still being processed by YouTube "will appear reminding you that no changes will be able to be made until this update has been completed
12. You can also monitor this update in the changelog tab
13. Once the status message has updated to unreleased/public the thumbnail update has been completed
