We've seen examples before with video thumbnails in the Google search results snippets. But it feels like Google is showing video thumbnails more often now, like they are with image thumbnails more often.
The screen shot above is from doing a query on [tesla autopilot] on my iPhone. Elliot shared other examples of these results showing up in the mobile search results:
Haven’t seen a video in a meta description before. Is this new?@aharis @rustybrick pic.twitter.com/lsTybiIXsi
— elliott. (@originalelliott) March 17, 2019
Are you seeing more and more video thumbnails in the mobile search results?
When you click on them, a video is not played, instead you are taken to the web page that has the embedded video on it.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Moz folks are seeing increases:
This is one of the few SERP features where we saw an increase in rate of appearance around the 12th. Not a huge jump, only ~3-5% increase, but still a noticeable change on the charts.
— Eric Hedekar (@EricHedekar) March 18, 2019
