YouTube Says Bigger Thumbnails Drove More Long-Form Views via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern

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YouTube's Todd Beaupré says the desktop homepage redesign with larger thumbnails drove more long-form engagement despite showing fewer videos at once. SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern 5 seconds ago ⋅ 3 min read SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal Bio Follow YouTube says its desktop homepage redesign, which features larger thumbnails, drove more attention and engagement around long-form videos, despite displaying fewer videos at once. Todd Beaupré, Senior Director of Growth and Discovery at YouTube, shared the result in a Creator Insider interview with YouTube Creator Liaison René Ritchie. The two also did the algorithm interview I covered in January 2025. The result answers a worry creators had raised about the layout, that showing fewer long-form thumbnails could mean less long-form viewing. Ritchie brought up the layout change because creators kept asking if the bigger thumbnails affected recommendations. Beaupré mentioned he’d heard about this concern too, but it didn’t play out that way: “This change is probably now coming up on a couple years. It actually drove more attention and engagement around long-form.” YouTube had the same concern before making the change and ran many experiments first. “We wouldn’t have launched that change if it reduced viewership,” he explained. The layout, he added, “helped grow long-form and short-form” and seems to be making it easier for viewers to decide what to watch. Beaupré connected the long-form gain to a pattern that YouTube has observed repeatedly during testing. The company used to believe that increasing density was the key, like showing viewers as many videos as possible so they’d eventually find something they liked. “Sometimes choice is overwhelming and they just don’t choose anything,” he explained. He described this insight as “often less is more” and mentioned that YouTube used to display much smaller thumbnails on mobile devices, operating under the same assumption about density. This perspective comes from YouTube’s own experiments. However, the interview didn’t include specific data from those tests, such as the scale of the changes or the timeframes involved. YouTube’s October 2024 platform update mentioned larger thumbnails and bigger text, among more than two dozen improvements. The post tied them to landscape browsing on mobile and didn’t describe the sparse desktop grid. Reports of a desktop homepage with two or three oversized cards per row go back to at least 2024, and they spread in April 2025, when Android Authority described the layout as a test with no word on a wider rollout. Beaupré’s remark about it being “coming up on a couple years” aligns with that timing, and his “rolled that out” puts YouTube on record that the layout launched. This update is separate from the 2019 desktop redesign that also increased thumbnail sizes. YouTube’s experiment results help explain why it decided to reduce the number of videos shown on the desktop homepage, even when creators had concerns. According to those tests, long-form did better with fewer, larger thumbnails. YouTube is describing the homepage as a whole, not how a bigger thumbnail might impact a single video. The interview didn’t mention how this change affected individual creators’ homepage impressions. Overall, YouTube says it saw more attention and engagement with long-form videos. Beaupré mentioned that YouTube runs hundreds of experiments at any given time, and Ritchie said a homepage change that people spot and post about on social media is often just a small test. For example, one user might see a different layout than another without any official announcement. Sometimes, a desktop homepage that looks different this week is one of those small experiments rather than a rollout. Add SEJ as a preferred source on Google Read Full Bio SEJ STAFF Matt G. Southern Senior News Writer at Search Engine Journal See short video versions of news stories on YouTube and TikTok. Matt G. Southern is the Senior News Writer at ... Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. How To Restructure Your Marketing Team & Budget For The AI-Search Era 4 Warning Signs Your Marketing Team Is Next For AI Cuts You’re Using AI At The Execution Layer. The Value Is In The Judgment Layer Join 75,000+ Digital Leaders. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. Learn how to connect search, AI, and PPC into one unstoppable strategy. In a world ruled by algorithms, SEJ brings timely, relevant information for SEOs, marketers, and entrepreneurs to optimize and grow their businesses -- and careers.

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Source: Search Engine Journal

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