Thumbnail Attachment

A video thumbnail is the still image people see before your video plays. Instead of letting Meta pick a frame, you can supply your own, and Ads Uploader attaches it for you based on the file name.

How It Works

Upload a video together with an image that has the same base name plus _thumbnail. Ads Uploader links the two, and the image becomes the video's thumbnail in every Meta placement. You control the first impression without any extra clicks.

Selecting a video and its matching _thumbnail image, uploading them, and the custom thumbnail appearing in the Uploaded Media table

To check that a thumbnail attached, open the preview. The Thumbnail field in Media Details reads User Uploaded for your own image and Auto Generated when the thumbnail was generated from the video instead.

Name Your Thumbnail

video_file_name.mp4
video_file_name_thumbnail.png

The thumbnail file must:

Start with exactly the same base name as the video
End with _thumbnail (with the default settings)
Use a supported image format

Upper and lower case do not matter. promo_Thumbnail.jpg matches promo.mp4.

An image whose name contains the thumbnail pattern is treated as a thumbnail, not as an ad image of its own.

Examples

These Match

Video file	Thumbnail file
`summer_sale.mp4`	`summer_sale_thumbnail.jpg`
`product_demo_v1.mov`	`product_demo_v1_thumbnail.png`
`ad_creative_001.m4v`	`ad_creative_001_thumbnail.webp`
`promo.mp4`	`promo_Thumbnail.jpg`

These Do Not Match

Video file	Thumbnail file	Why
`summer_sale.mp4`	`summer_thumb.jpg`	The base name and suffix do not match
`video1.mp4`	`video1-thumbnail.png`	Uses a hyphen, but the separator is `_` (unless you change it to `-`)

If you upload several aspect ratio versions of a video, you do not need a thumbnail for each one. Ads Uploader looks for thumbnails in this order:

A thumbnail for that exact file, for example ad_9x16_thumbnail.png for ad_9x16.mp4.
A shared thumbnail for the group, for example ad_thumbnail.png.

So this set gives every version the same thumbnail:

ad_1x1.mp4
ad_9x16.mp4
ad_16x9.mp4
ad_thumbnail.png

Add a version-specific thumbnail only where you want a different image.

Supported Formats

Videos: MP4, MOV, M4V

Thumbnails: PNG, JPG/JPEG, WebP, GIF

Change the Thumbnail Pattern

The default pattern is the separator _ followed by the suffix thumbnail. You can change both in Account > Defaults > General > Thumbnail Matching.

Setting	Default	Limit	What it does
Separator	`_`	Up to 3 characters	The character(s) between the video name and the suffix
Suffix	`thumbnail`	Up to 20 characters	The word that marks a file as a thumbnail

Examples with custom settings:

Separator	Suffix	Video file	Thumbnail file
`_`	`thumbnail`	`promo.mp4`	`promo_thumbnail.jpg`
`-`	`thumb`	`promo.mp4`	`promo-thumb.jpg`
`_`	`cover`	`promo.mp4`	`promo_cover.jpg`

See User Defaults for the rest of the General settings.

Documentation