Youtubers who advertise: By @Laura_Amelia_
By Laura Magee
Youtubers who advertise:
Before we left for half term, I was asked by one of the mentors about my knowledge of Youtube.
Being 19 years old and having spent half my teenage years avidly watching the daily lives of people around the world condensed into a 10 minute video every day, it’s fair to say I know quite a bit about the Youtube community and how you can simply get addicted to it.
I began watching Zoella for her honest opinions of beauty products and fashion and this is how she created her initial fan base. Like when Kate Middleton buys a dress and the store sells out, Zoella has had a similar effect, influencing what people buy, including me.
I try and watch her videos as much as I can, purely to stay on top of currents trends and look at the things millions of consumers are watching too and try to take in the same information they see. You can’t tell if 100,000 teenage girls see a billboard advert targeted at them but when she’s receiving so many views, you can pretty much guarantee 100,000 teenage girls watched her vlog.
For someone who can get 1 million views everyday and still has people returning is any advertisers dream.
Since we’ve been off I have gone back to watching the channels I’ve been subscribed to for years, so yes that does mean spending my evenings watching people walk round a supermarket deciding what they might buy or talk about completely random subjects (which eventually led me to a snippet from Loose Women – which is a surprisingly useful source if you want to hear and try to solve the concerns of middle aged+ women).
What was unusual was that I noticed loads of video titles ended with ‘ad’ which came up as suggestions indicating that at some point during it there would be products featured and the channels had been payed to do so. I’m not completely behind the times as I know they’ve been doing it for a while, but looking back at my own behaviour I naturally avoided these.
I was sat thinking why I thought I did this yet I enjoy watching ads (I seem to over analyse my ad related thoughts far too much since starting SCA) .
But for me it takes away everything away what they stood for in my mind. I want to hear someones point of view, not feel like they’re just another platform for advertisers to push their product. It makes me question whether what they say about other things is true or if it’s just something else they’ve been fed money to say.
I spoke to a few friends and interestingly they said the same.
It makes a lot of sense that brands would of course want them to talk about their product, but I can’t help but feel that this way is less genuine and goes back to what many mentors say about the importance of a brands communication.
Could advertising a product through a Youtube channel be potentially damaging to the product and to the channel?
