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Video Thumbnail is Important
The still shot (image) you see before a video starts playing is called a “video thumbnail”. The thumbnail chosen for your video is Extremely important. Similar in function to a Magazine Cover Photo, it is the first impression someone gets as they decide if they will watch your video or move on to another.
Video Thumbnail Choices
The different video hosting sites on the Internet take different approaches to the creation of your Video Thumbnail. YouTube (the most popular site to date) lets you choose from 3 thumbnails that it makes from your uploaded video. You may not like any of the choices that YouTube offers but at least you can choose from the three they suggest.
Other sites will not offer you a choice at all but will select the single thumbnail from your video and thats all you get.
Video Thumbnail Selection
Each video hosting site creates the Video Thumbnail using different methods. Some will choose it from a standard location in every video submitted of any length. Others will base it on a certain percentage or length of the video.
Video Thumbnail Spamming
The reason why there is so much mystery surrounding how the Video Thumbnail is made is simple. Many people have abused this all-important image by inserting fake or misleading images that have nothing to do with the content of the video just to get more people to watch their video.
In order to help maintain the integrity or relevance of the video (and for monetary reasons as well) many video hosting sites will not publish how they choose your video thumbnail image, keeping it a mystery.
Video Thumbnail - Show Me the Money!
Why does this spamming practice occur? It's simple: Follow the Money! Many video hosting sites will pay the video owner an advertising commission based on the number of views their video gets, so getting a large number of views (even if people don't watch the entire clip) can pay off in big numbers of dollars.
Therefore in order to help assure the advertisers that their ads are being seen in appropriate videos, the hosting sites are making it a challenge for you to choose your own thumbnail.
That’s where we come in. We have a way to help you choose the perfect thumbnail image for any video you post. Beyond what we can do to help, there are a few video hosting sites that make it possible for you to choose a good image to represent your Video Thumbnail.
Video Thumbnail Choice Made Easy
Some video hosting sites actually allow you to make this all-important choice (your Video Thumbnail Image) as part of their service. We have included some video tutorials here for 2 such sites:
MetaCafe &
Viddler.
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Watch the video below to learn about getting the perfect video thumbnail image!
You can also view this video as:
Video Thumbnail Made Easy... on YouTube
Video Thumbnail Service
At Video Leads Online, we offer you a thumbnail service that can help you get the proper Video Thumbnail to represent your video. The purpose of this service is not to encourage spamming (as mentioned before) but to allow you to choose the proper image that should be used to represent the content and advertising message of your video.
We offer a quick solution called a “Thumbnail Cheat Sheet”. It is customized for your exact video length. You give us the length of your video, we tell you where thumbnails are pulled from—it is that simple.
If you prefer, we can insert still images into your video file and return the modified file to you, or we'll even go so far as to upload the adjusted video on your behalf to various sites using the information you provide us.
This service is available for an ever expanding number of video hosting sites. We do not offer this service for YouTube.
Read about the details and pricing here.
Please Note: We will not knowingly assist the creation of Video Thumbnail Images that are pornographic in nature or do not appropriately represent the content of the video to which they are attached.
Video Thumbnail Service: Free Thumbnail Sample
We also offer a free thumbnail sample of the Video Thumbnail Service here. This sample will give you the information you will need to adjust your video so that the content you desire is in the proper position of the video with 3 very popular video hosting sites: MySpace, Yahoo, and MotionBox (AOL Video).
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