Algorithms Love Patterns: Why Copying Thumbnails Works on YouTube

Thumbnails play a critical role in YouTube success. They are often the deciding factor in whether someone clicks a video.

Mr.Beast, the #1 YouTuber in the world, creates thumbnails first even before he creates titles.

A smaller channel, BeyondBoundsYT, shows how mimicking the thumbnail style of a larger, established channel like Fireship can help increase visibility and attract viewers.

Fireship is a YouTube channel with over 3 million subscribers. It focuses on programming, AI, and tech topics.

A Fireship thumbnail often uses contrasting colors like red color and black background with simple logos. These design choices makes it immediately recognizable in YouTube recommendations.

BeyondBoundsYT, a small YouTube channel with 833 subscribers, got an outlier video with 4.7k views by mirroring the thumbnail style of Fireship.

One viewer commented on this video, “Clicked on this thinking it was a Fireship video. Nice trick with the thumbnail. Maybe not the most ethical, but nice trick.”

The strategy works because the niches of both channels have an overlap. Fireship targets programming and AI audience while BeyondBoundsYT targets AI specifically.

Algorithms Recognize Patterns

YouTube’s systems prioritize thumbnails that resemble successful content. It helps that people who are trained with a particular thumbnail (like I am with Fireship thumbnails) often click such thumbnails when they see a video in their recommendations. That's how I actually found the video as I thought I missed a Fireship video.

YouTube isn't the only algorithm who scans images. Facebook’s algorithm scans images as well to predict virality.

Alen isn't the only one who has noticed it with Facebook algorithm. Virtually all FB experts recommend to recreate the same video that already went viral before. Here's a 3-year old video by Dylan Pondir recommending the same thing for E-Commerce businesses.

And that's not all. Short-form creators like Miquel Castany argue that “if a video went viral once, it should go viral twice” when styles are replicated. Platforms like Instagram and TikTok also reward recycled visual trends, proving this approach works beyond YouTube.

Similarly, YouTube’s AI likely favors familiar designs and humans often recognize patterns. So when you see a familiar thumbnail, your mind is trained to click on it.

BeyondBoundsYT’s video on “Why o3 isn’t as Smart as You Think” used Fireship’s exact color scheme, leading to higher click-through rates. It got 4.7k views on its small channel. It is 5x as much as its subscriber base.

How to Replicate the Tactic

1. Copy Colors Precisely: Use identical hex codes and background shades of a top YouTube channel in your niche.

2. Mirror Layouts: Place text in the same spot, use similar icons, and maintain high contrast.

3. Stay Consistent: Publish 5–10 videos with the same style to train viewers and algorithms.

Copying thumbnail styles isn’t about stealing content — it’s about leveraging proven visual patterns. Once you are big enough, you can create your own thumbnail style for other small creators to be inspired.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

TikTok strategically positioned the new president as a hero by showing a popup and leveraged small businesses to gain sympathy. PR masterclass!

When news of a potential ban surfaced, TikTok shifted its focus from creators to promoting TikTok Shops.

The idea was that if many American businesses relied on TikTok, the platform would be harder to ban.

This strategy seems to have worked, and it will be interesting to see how long it lasts.

2/

2x the productivity by opening a second instance and work on 2 features simultaneously.

Legit didn't think of that. I keep waiting for output with the new Deepseek R1 thinking model (which is excellent for writing, by the way) instead of opening a 2nd tab.

3/

Classic example of trendjacking. If the ban discussion resurfaces in 90 days, you can use the same strategy again.

Rabbit Holes

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2. Generate a full script for a faceless Youtube video. Prompt chain included. by /r/ChatGPTPro

3. The Wild Story of How I Made $1,036,175 in 67 Days During COVID by Marshall Haas

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