The best YouTube thumbnail images convert casual scrollers into engaged viewers. But what facial expressions do top YouTubers use to attract viewers in their millions? We analyzed the thumbnails of YouTube’s most watched videos to find out.

“I closed my mouth on all my thumbnails and the watch time went up on every video lol,” wrote MrBeast, the world’s most subscribed YouTuber, in September 2023. “We must not rest until mouths are closed in everyone’s thumbnails.”

MrBeast’s face-changing discovery happened after YouTube began rolling out A/B testing on thumbnail images last June. The platform and its creators alike know the importance of preview images in converting scrollers into clickers: “90% of the best-performing videos have custom thumbnails,” according to YouTube’s thumbnail tips page. And face expressions — specifically, strong emotive face expressions — are proven to drive views.

But which emotions are most effective? To find out what expressions the leading YouTubers are wearing, we used AI facial recognition technology to analyze the emotions used in the biggest-hitting videos and by figures such as MrBeast, PewDiePie and SSSniperWolf.

How We Conducted This Study

We used an AI facial recognition tool called Amazon Rekognition to identify the emotion on the most prominent faces of the most popular and most watched YouTubers’ thumbnail images. With this data in hand, we were able to find the most common thumbnail expressions in each YouTube genre and the breakdown of emotions used by the highest-profile YouTube stars.

Key Findings

• Surprised (26.95%) and happy (26.65%) facial expressions in YouTube thumbnails correlate with the highest number of videos.
• SSSniperWolf has a surprised expression in 70% of her video thumbnails, making her the top YouTuber with the most consistent thumbnail emotion.
• MrBeast, the YouTuber with the most subscribers, is happy in 36.36% of his thumbnails and fearful in 18.18%.

Surprised and Happy YouTube Thumbnails Attract the Most Views

It’s neck-and-neck for the most commonly used facial expressions by the most watched YouTube creators. Some 26.95% of video thumbnails by top YouTubers lead with a surprised expression, while happy expressions are most prominent in 26.65% of them. Meanwhile, the least used expressions are sad (1.50%) and disgusted (0.90%).

But the less common thumbnail emotions do have their uses. For example, the Sidemen use a disgusted expression on one in every 25 videos (see Mark Rober is the Most Happy, below), such as the band’s take on Come Dine With Me. The thumbnail combines disgust with humor, showing Harry “W2S” Lewis turning his nose up at a burnt pizza — and it won 6.1 million views in two weeks. Still, just as weepies and horror movies appeal to a certain state of mind, our figures suggest that sadness and disgust are best saved for the appropriate time and place.

The power of emotional connection in digital marketing is well documented. However, emotional engagement is a subtle art, despite what the exaggerated expressions on top YouTube video thumbnails might suggest. We found that, overall, positive emotions are the most surefire way of gaining views — but it depends whose views you’re trying to win.

When reviewing the findings of this study, our co-founder Eric Lu said: 

“I originally thought that angry or sad video previews would get the most clicks, but this data shows that successful YouTube creators prefer using a happy or surprised face in their thumbnails. I interpret that to mean that viewers like watching (and engaging with) positive content on YouTube. Hopefully, this also means that up-and-coming creators on YouTube will also focus on creating more positive content overall.”

Next, we broke down the thumbnail expressions used by ten of YouTube’s most watched creators. 

Mark Rober is the Most Happy, and SSSniperWolf the Most Surprised on YouTube

Our data shows that MrBeast and Mark Rober are among four of the ten who most commonly use a happy expression on their thumbnails.

Pop science and gadget guy Mark Rober is happiest of all, smiling in 57.14% of his thumbnails — in the rest, he’s ‘calm.’ His images often include mindboggling still frames of his experiments and demonstrations, with Rober’s face relatively small in the frame. Maintaining a reasonably neutral smile or calm expression adds a human touch without drawing attention from the wow factor of Rober’s backgrounds.

There are three top ten YouTubers with unique ‘top expressions.’ Dude Perfect is 36.36% calm, Ludwig is 60% confused, and 47.37% of the Stokes Twins’ thumbnails lead with fear. The Stokes Twins riff on the sensationalist approach of clickbait media and National Enquirer-like headlines. Their all-caps titles make unlikely claims and colorful, brazenly doctored images promise a shocking payoff but play out as comedy. As such, the Stokes always undercut fear in their expressions with a sense of humor or comic overstatement.

Uncovering the Most Popular Thumbnail Facial Expression by YouTube Category

Finally, we analyzed the facial expressions used in YouTube thumbnails for different genres. We found that, for most genres, around 35% or more thumbnail expressions are happy, and the second most common expression is usually calm, followed by surprised. Most other expressions appear less than 10% of the time. Travel is the genre with the highest percentage of thumbnails with happy faces (53.69%), and Fitness & Sports is the genre with the most calm faces (37.38%).

The standout exception is the Gaming genre, where surprised (28.14%) is the most common expression, followed by happy (22.16%) — with a significant number of calm (14.97%) or angry (10.78%) thumbnails thrown in. This may reflect the variety of in-play experiences that gamers respond to and a strategy of varying the headline emotions of review videos. Gaming is the only genre where more than 10% of the thumbnail faces show anger or fear.

The Keys to Irresistible YouTube Thumbnails

Your YouTube thumbnail is how new audiences discover you, and loyal subscribers pick you out from the crowd. Try following these four tips to improve your thumbnail game in a single session.

1. Find your style and stick to it. Identify your brand’s color scheme, font and thumbnail format and use it consistently to look professional and make your videos easy to spot. Experimenting with slight variations to see what works is fine — but don’t lose your identity. 

2. Include brief titles or summaries. Adding text to your thumbnail communicates your video’s selling point at a glance and can help keep your audience tuned in from one video to the next. But remember: image text will not be translated.

3. Be bold. Small or subtle thumbnail details are likely to be missed. Make your thumbnail bold, clear and unique to stand out from the crowd, and ensure that image text is big enough to make an impact on a small screen.

4. Use our YouTube Thumbnail Maker. We created an easy thumbnail maker in Kapwing. Upload your video or paste the YouTube link, and choose a still frame from your material — then add text, images and filters using our intuitive tools. With a free Kapwing account, you can export your finished thumbnail image and add it to your YouTube channel.

The YouTube algorithm promotes videos with proven engagement — and, of course, you want people to see your hard work. So, your YouTube thumbnail needs to grab potential viewers’ curiosity but also to build realistic expectations of the video’s content to hold viewers to the end. That’s why, despite the effectiveness of ‘YouTube surprised face,’ there’s no single correct emotion, just what works for each video. Think how the vibe and expressions of Hollywood’s biggest stars shape your expectations of a movie from the poster.

Our co-founder Eric Lu recommends not narrowing your focus on facial expressions, “There’s plenty that goes into a good YouTube thumbnail that goes beyond just a face. For example, adding a clear title to your thumbnail is key for helping viewers understand what to expect. It’s important to also mention that for certain channels, a face might not be necessary at all!”

As in Hollywood, the most important thing is that the work itself is good. A mathematically precise thumbnail image will only be effective if it’s in the service of a great video. As Zackary Smigel, creator of the infamous Why is YouTube like this? video, says: “the biggest thing is just creating a really good video and understanding your audience.”

Methodology

We started by building a seed list of the most popular and highest-viewed YouTubers overall and across ten categories (gaming, science, sports, food, etc.) using social media statistics counters such as SocialBlade.

Next, we used the artificial intelligence facial recognition tool Amazon Rekognition to analyze the faces in the YouTube thumbnails for the shortlisted YouTubers. Using the detected boundaries, we removed background faces in cases where other people were in the shot.

For the dominant face, Amazon Rekognition predicted attributes with a confidence level (0-100) assigned for each prediction. We assigned each face in the sample an emotion based on Rekognition’s prediction with the highest confidence score.

Finally, we calculated the distribution of emotions by category and across a shortlist of highly popular YouTubers, including Dude Perfect, KSI, JuegaGerman, LazarBeam, Ludwig, Mark Rober, MrBeast, PewDiePie, SSSniperWolf, Sidemen and Stokes Twins.

This study was conducted in September 2024.