Packaging

Packaging covers the title and the thumbnail together, on the grounds that nobody ever meets one without the other. A thumbnail repeating the words already in the title wastes half the space available; the two make a single promise between them, and the video then has to keep it. Studio's test tool compares up to three titles, thumbnails or pairings over a period of up to two weeks, which turns some of the argument into a measurement.

Worth knowing before you repackage something old: changing a title or thumbnail does not by itself make YouTube serve the video more or less often. What changes is how people respond to what they are now being shown.