Lisa Eldridge is one of the most popular makeup artists on Youtube. My hypothesis for her Channel is that when she uses before/after comparison images as her makeup tutorial covers, she gets more views and likes. It turns out that the hypothesis is only partially true. The total sample size is 27 and she uses before/after images in 11 of them. The analysis shows that she DOES get a lot more views if she uses those images as the covers, probably because those paired photos vividly depict how dramatic the makeup transformation is. On the other hand, contrary to my expectation, the percentage of likes to views is actually slightly higher when she does NOT use before/after images. The difference is about 1% and not statistically significant. A potential explanation is that people usually like a video after watching it. Before/after images are good tools to hook viewers but the quality of the content decides whether people will give it a thumbs up.
