The busy online publisher page where an advertiser’s Xspot is running contains a lot of content, all of which competes for viewers’ attention.
So how do you get an Xspot to stand out? To reach through the clutter and motivate viewers to watch?
By actively choosing a compelling thumbnail image. That’s how.
What is a thumbnail image?
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of the thumbnail image.
Studies show that consumers spend considerably more time engaging with video ads than with display ads, and that higher exposure rates mean more conversions.
But, if consumers never start watching a video ad, none of that great engagement, exposure, or conversion can happen.
That’s where thumbnail images come in.
Typically, media companies do not allow video ads that run on their sites to play automatically when viewers land on the pages where the video ads are embedded. Instead, video ads play when viewers click or pause their cursors over them.
The thumbnail image is the image that viewers see in the video ad player before they take action with their cursors.
The thumbnail image, in other words, is all you’ve got to influence whether or not that cursor action ever gets taken.
Choosing thumbnail images in Mixpo version 3
If you don’t take action to set a thumbnail image, you get the default image.
To see an Xspot’s thumbnail image, make sure its play mode is set for click-to-play or mouseover-to-play, then preview it.
The image you see in the Player on the preview page before you click or pause your cursor over the Xspot is the thumbnail image.
In previous versions of the Mixpo platform, you had one option for replacing the default image with a more compelling one: upload the more compelling one. In version 3, you can still go that route.
In addition, you have another powerful option: You can examine each frame of each video clip included in an Xspot and choose the frame that tells the most compelling story.
Choose Thumbnail from Video window
In the Choose Thumbnail from Video window, you can extract any video frame and set it as the thumbnail image.
Find detailed instructions for choosing a thumbnail image, visit the Create page and then click Where can I get a good thumbnail image?
Tags: Mixpo, Publishing, thumbnail, Xspot