Imagine two Amazon onsite videos for the same product. Same length. Same tone. Same general quality. Both sitting in the upper carousel. One of them pulls significantly more helpful votes than the other. Why?

I kept running into that question, so I went and got the data. I analyzed more than 15,000 Amazon products, over 30,000 videos, and more than 13,000 creators in the Amazon Influencer Program. One pattern showed up over and over again, and it was not subtle: onsite videos with custom thumbnails pull far more helpful votes than videos without them. Not in one carousel slot. In all five.

Table of Contents

The Hypothetical: Two Nearly Identical Videos

Start with the thought experiment, because it frames everything that follows.

Two videos. Same product page. Comparable length, comparable production, comparable information. The carousel positions rotate, so neither one is permanently parked in a better slot. And yet one consistently collects more likes and helpful votes than the other.

There is really only one logical answer available: one of them got watched more. Nobody votes a video helpful without watching it. So the question stops being “which video is better” and becomes “which video got clicked.”

The Data: 15,000 Products, 30,000 Videos, 13,000 Creators

I did not want to guess at this, so I pulled a large sample:

  • More than 15,000 Amazon products
  • More than 30,000 onsite videos
  • More than 13,000 creators in the Amazon Influencer Program

Then I looked at helpful votes across each of the five slots in the upper carousel, split by whether the video had a custom thumbnail or was using a default frame grab from the video itself.

Custom Thumbnails Win in Every Carousel Position

This is the part that made me sit up. It was not a marginal edge in one slot that could be explained away as noise. Custom thumbnails outperformed in every single position, one through five.

And in position one — the most valuable real estate on the product page — the gap was close to double.

That consistency is what makes the finding credible. If custom thumbnails only won in one slot, you would suspect something about that slot. Winning across all five points at the thumbnail itself as the variable.

Position One: Custom Thumbnails 53% of the Time

Here is the other number worth sitting with. Videos holding position one had custom thumbnails 53% of the time.

Think about what that implies. Custom thumbnails are still the minority approach across the program as a whole — most Amazon onsite videos are running default thumbnails. But at the top of the carousel, they are the majority. That is a group punching well above its weight.

Why This Works: Clicks Come Before Votes

The mechanism here is not complicated, and I think that is exactly why it gets overlooked.

Most Amazon onsite videos are, honestly, pretty similar to each other. Same product, similar demonstration, similar talking points, similar length. When the content itself is roughly comparable across the board, the thumbnail becomes the primary needle mover — because it is the only thing that differs at the moment the shopper decides whether to click.

More clicks means more views. More views means more chances at a helpful vote. And you cannot vote a video helpful if you never watched it in the first place. The thumbnail is not competing with your video. It is the gate your video has to get through.

How I Adjusted for Thumbnail Volume Bias

I want to be upfront about the obvious objection, because it is a fair one.

Creators who bother making custom thumbnails tend to be creators who take the whole thing more seriously. They probably also pick better products, light their shots better, and write better titles. So is the thumbnail doing the work, or is “being a diligent creator” doing the work and the thumbnail is just a marker for it?

That is why I adjusted for thumbnail volume bias in the analysis rather than just reporting raw averages. The effect held up. It is also worth noting the carousel positions rotate, which removes another chunk of the confounding — the videos are not permanently advantaged by placement.

I will also point out that YouTube creators figured this out a decade ago. Thumbnails are treated as a core competency over there, not an afterthought. Amazon’s carousel is a different surface, but the underlying human behavior is the same — people decide what to click based on what they can see before they click.

You Are Not the Target Demographic

This is the mindset shift I want to leave you with, and it is the one I see creators get wrong most often.

When you design a thumbnail, you are not designing it for yourself. You are not designing it for other creators. You are designing it for a shopper who is mid-purchase-decision, scrolling a product page, deciding in about half a second whether your video is worth their time.

Your taste is not the metric. Their click is. If a thumbnail feels a little too obvious or a little too loud to you but it clearly communicates what the shopper is about to see, that is probably the right call.

What To Actually Do With This

Custom thumbnails are one of the cheapest needle movers available to you in the Amazon Influencer Program. They cost you a few minutes per video. They do not require new equipment, a reshoot, or a bigger audience.

  1. Start with your best products. Go to your highest-traffic, highest-earning items first. That is where a lift in click-through is worth the most.
  2. Make the subject unmistakable. The shopper should know what product they are about to see without reading anything.
  3. Go back and retrofit. Your existing catalog is still working the carousel every day. Updating thumbnails on older videos is found money.
  4. Then keep it as standard practice. Every new video gets one. It stops being a task and becomes part of the workflow.

Picking products worth filming is the front half of this. Seeing what is actually earning is the back half. That is the whole reason I built Oink for Influencers — so you are not guessing at either one.

This is one piece of a larger data study I have been working through, and there are more drops coming. If you want to find products worth filming and actually see what is earning on your storefront, take a look at Oink. And go check your own thumbnails — I would bet you have a few videos that are one thumbnail away from doing a lot better.

I'm an Amazon Influencer since 2023 and blogger since 2021. My goal is to help you succeed in the Amazon Influencer Program.

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