Picture this: you go to your favorite streaming platform to find new content to watch. As you scroll through the endless options, what draws your attention? Is it the title? The description? Or do the colorful settings and images of the show's main characters as played by your favorite actors catch your eye first? Does the eerie red font of a horror film's title elicit a reaction from you? These reactions are no coincidence.
Program artwork is a powerful trigger for your brain, immediately prompting a reaction, either to click and learn more or keep scrolling. Visuals are usually the first stimulus to capture your attention and pique your interest. Most viewers decide within seconds if they will watch something or move on, so as a content creator or publisher, you must make every second count. It’s a matter of “watch” or “skip it!”
3 Reasons to Make Artwork a Top Metadata Priority
Let’s be clear, providing the right amount of descriptive metadata will greatly improve the likelihood that audiences can find and discover your content—and every element of metadata helps: title, genre, keywords, credits—but it’s the visual elements that draw viewers in. Here's why artwork is such a critical element of metadata:
- It Catches the Eye.
Our brains are hard-wired to respond to visual cues and images first. Research shows that people process images 60,000x faster than text. Text-based metadata works in the background, telling the platform what images to serve up, but from the viewer's browsing perspective, it's usually the images that drive them to click—before they've even had time to think the words, "this looks interesting." Even children too young to read learn to find new content by clicking on character images and colorful artwork. - It Evokes Human Emotion.
Your program’s artwork does more than just catch viewers' attention, it also provokes an emotional response, and emotions and their release play a big role when it comes to deciding how to spend our precious free time. Your program's artwork is the most immediate way to signal what moods and emotions your audience is likely to experience. Whether it's excitement, adventure, desire, grief, fear, comfort, terror, love, or triumph, it's emotion that ultimately moves them to act. - It Influences Patterns of Behavior.
Once a viewer becomes familiar with your program’s artwork, they remember it more easily and respond to it more quickly. The more seasons and episodes they watch, the more quickly they will recognize your brand and images of your show's key characters, driving views of ancillary and companion content as well as series and episodes. Not only that, but increasingly, viewing platforms and Smart TVs leverage personal choices and preferences and prioritize content suggestions based on past viewing behavior. What this means is that viewers who like your content will get more and more of it recommended to them, creating viewing habits and a virtuous circle of brand awareness and loyalty.
Timing Matters: When to Put Your Artwork Out There
Given the power that artwork has to drive an audience's discovery of and engagement with your content, it's important to point out that timing matters. Once the name of your program is mentioned by the press or announced as a forthcoming release, people will start looking for it. And what they will want to see and will most remember is the artwork. Days or weeks that go by in which your program is not paired with artwork on websites and platforms are missed opportunities you can't get back—whereas having your artwork out early helps generate buzz and excitement for your show.
Tips for Timing
- Send artwork as early as possible and ideally at greenlighting or as soon as a program is confirmed for distribution.
- Send artwork for national program listings no later than 4 weeks prior to broadcast air.
- In the event you're waiting to be sure that specific images make it into the final produced version, consider putting other, safer "placeholder" images out instead, or plan to update the images in the event it's necessary to change them later. Even having less-than-best key art up when an audience is likely to look for it is better than having nothing at all!
" For a station of our size we get an obscene amount of traffic on YouTube—15 million views last year, in a state of 500,000! When we looked at the analytics, we saw that a lot of those views are being driven by thumbnail images. When I shared those usage statistics with our producers, it helped them understand why the art matters. The value of imagery, especially in online media, is becoming extraordinarily important. "
— Terry Dugas, General Manager, Wyoming PBS
Other Best Practices
Practice makes perfect! In order to increase content discoverability, make sure you prioritize creative elements along with descriptive metadata by following these best practices:
- Prioritize the creation of artwork early in the production life cycle.
- Learn and understand the specifications of your platforms and partners and supply each with the formats and sizes they request, or you risk delays—platforms have different needs and it's in your best interests to ensure all requirements are met.
- Make sure your artwork and images capture the true essence of your program.
- Ensure program artwork is updated throughout the content life-cycle as needed—especially if the artwork changes from season to season.
- These images will be requested and used over and over again, so create organization-wide file naming conventions and image creation workflows. Be sure to map image files to the appropriate content ID for each program and establish a single location where anyone internally can access these high-value metadata elements and know that they're using the correct version.
The Big 'Picture':
Artwork and image availability greatly improve the viewer’s search experience for content discovery. It’s your audience's first engagement with your content, so make it pop! The way visuals help us make decisions is so ingrained in our everyday way of living that we don’t even realize how much it impacts how we choose what to watch. That’s why artwork should never be an afterthought, or something only done sporadically. The way imagery influences audience behavior can make all the difference between whether your content is viewed or skipped over. Artwork is essential to a positive search and content discovery experience for audiences.
Sources / Links for Further Reading:
- Artwork Types & Specifications: A Guide to Key Art: Gaya King
- How Images Influence User Behavior: Imonomy.com Blog
- Creating a Lasting Impression with Key Art: Zevendesign.com
