A YouTuber is an
online personality
An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer, social media personality, internet personality, or simply influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social ...
and/or
influencer
An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer, social media personality, internet personality, or simply influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social m ...
who produces videos on the video-sharing platform
YouTube
YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and social media, social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by ...
, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel.
The term was first used in the English language in 2006.
Influence
![MrBeast frontface 2021](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/MrBeast_frontface_2021.png)
Influential YouTubers are frequently described as
microcelebrities.
Since YouTube is widely conceived as a bottom-up social media video platform, microcelebrities do not appear to be involved with the established and commercial system of celebrity culture, but rather appear self-governed and independent. This appearance, in turn, leads to YouTubers being seen as more relatable and authentic, also fostered by the direct connection between artist and viewer using the medium of YouTube.
In 2014, the
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...
surveyed 1318-year-olds in the United States on whether 10 YouTube celebrities or 10 traditional celebrities were more influential; YouTube personalities took the first five spots of the ranking, with the YouTube duo
Smosh
Smosh is an American YouTube sketch comedy- improv collective founded by Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox. In 2002, Padilla created a website named "smosh.com" for making Flash animations, and he was later joined by Hecox. They began to post v ...
ranking as most influential.
It repeated in 2015 and found six YouTubers on the first ranks, with
KSI
Olajide Olayinka Williams "JJ" Olatunji (born 19 June 1993), known professionally as KSI, is an English YouTuber and rapper. He is a co-founder and member of the British YouTube group known as the Sidemen. He is the CEO of Misfits Boxing and ...
ranked as most influential.
Several prominent YouTubers and their influence were subjects for scientific studies, such as
Zoella
Zoë Elizabeth Sugg (born 28 March 1990), also known by her online name Zoella, is an English media personality, entrepreneur, and author. She began her career as a YouTuber in 2009, and has since amassed over 10 million subscribers.
In 2014, ...
and
PewDiePie
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg ( , ; born 24 October 1989), better known as PewDiePie ( ), is a Swedish YouTuber known for his Let's Play videos and comedic formatted videos and shows. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage ...
. Numerous studies in the late 2010s found that YouTuber was the most desired career by children.
YouTubers' influence has also extended beyond the platform. Some have ventured into mainstream forms of media, such as
Liza Koshy
Elizabeth Shaila "Liza" Koshy (born March 31, 1996), is an American media personality and actress. Her main YouTube channel has amassed more than 17 million subscribers, and her two channels have a combined total of over 3 billion views. She ha ...
, who, among other pursuits, hosted the revival of the
Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American pay television television channel, channel which launched on April 1, 1979, as the first cable channel for children. It is run by Paramount Global through its List of assets owned by Param ...
show ''
Double Dare'' and starred in the
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a fil ...
dance-comedy film ''
Work It''. In 2019, ''
Ryan's Mystery Playdate
''Ryan's Mystery Playdate'' is an American live-action children's television series created and produced by the company PocketWatch, Inc. The series is based on the Ryan's World YouTube channel, which signed an advertising deal with PocketWatch ...
'', a show starring Ryan Kaji, the then-seven-year-old host of the toy review and vlog channel
Ryan's World
Ryan's World (formerly Ryan ToysReview) is a children's YouTube channel for children aged 2–6 featuring Ryan Kaji along with his mother (Loann Kaji), father (Shion Kaji), and twin sisters (Emma and Kate).
The channel usually releases a new ...
, began airing on
Nick Jr.
Nick Jr. (known on-air as the Nick Jr. Channel) is an American pay television channel spun off from Nickelodeon's long-running programming block of the same name. It is run by Paramount Global through its networks division's Kids and Family Gr ...
; later that year,
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...
debuted ''
A Little Late with Lilly Singh
''A Little Late with Lilly Singh'' is an American late-night talk show that was broadcast by NBC. Premiering on September 16, 2019, and hosted by Canadian comedian and internet celebrity Lilly Singh, it succeeded ''Last Call with Carson Daly'' ...
'' in its 1:35 AM
ET time slot.
Singh's digital prominence was cited as a reason for her selection as host by then-NBC Entertainment co-chairman George Cheeks. In addition to expanding into other forms of media, several YouTubers have used their influence to raise money for charity or speak out on social issues. Notable examples include
MrBeast
Jimmy Donaldson (born May 7, 1998), better known as MrBeast, is an American YouTube personality, credited with pioneering a genre of YouTube videos that centers on expensive stunts. His MrBeast YouTube channel had 112.2 million subscribers a ...
and
Mark Rober
Mark B. Rober is an American YouTuber, engineer, inventor, and educator. He is known for his YouTube videos on popular science and do-it-yourself gadgets. Before YouTube, Rober was an engineer with NASA for nine years, where he spent seven y ...
, who helped raise over $20 million with their
Team Trees
Team Trees, stylized as #TEAMTREES, is a collaborative fundraiser that raised 20 million U.S. dollars before the start of 2020 to plant 20 million trees. The initiative was started by American YouTubers MrBeast and Mark Rober, and was mostly s ...
campaign, and
Felipe Neto
Felipe Neto Rodrigues Vieira (born January 21, 1988) is a Brazilian YouTuber, businessman, actor, comedian, writer and philanthropist, currently having 44.7 million subscribers and more than fifteen billion accumulated views, he is considered ...
, who publicly criticized Brazilian president
Jair Bolsonaro for his response to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
. In 2020, ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' named Neto and fellow YouTuber
JoJo Siwa
Joelle Joanie "JoJo" Siwa (; born May 19, 2003) is an American dancer, singer, actress and YouTuber. She is known for appearing for two seasons on '' Dance Moms'' along with her mother, Jessalynn Siwa, and for her singles " Boomerang" and "Kid ...
to its
annual list of the world's 100 most influential people.
Because of this level of influence, Robert Hovden argued for the creation of a new index similar to the
g-index
The ''g''-index is an author-level metric suggested in 2006 by Leo Egghe. The index is calculated based on the distribution of citations received by a given researcher's publications, such that given a set of articles ranked in decreasing order ...
and
h-index
The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...
to evaluate a person's output and impact on YouTube.
Monetization
![2017- Top earners on YouTube - column chart](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/da/2017-_Top_earners_on_YouTube_-_column_chart.svg)
YouTubers can earn revenue from
Google AdSense
Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advert ...
. Additionally, they can supplement their income through
affiliate links
Affiliate marketing is a marketing arrangement in which affiliates receive a commission for each visit, signup or sale they generate for a merchant. This arrangement allows businesses to outsource part of the sales process. It is a form of p ...
,
merchandising
Merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to displaying products that are for sale in a creative way that entices customers to purchase more i ...
, and 3rd party memberships using platforms such as
Patreon
Patreon (, ) is a membership platform that provides business tools for content creators to run a subscription service. It helps creators and artists earn a monthly income by providing rewards and perks to their subscribers. Patreon charges a co ...
.
Popular channels have garnered corporate sponsors, who pay to be included in the videos.
In 2018,
Walmart
Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...
,
Nordstrom
Nordstrom, Inc. () is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, a ...
, and others sought YouTube stars as
influencers
An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer, social media personality, internet personality, or simply influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet. The rise of social m ...
.
In the early days of YouTube, there was no way to monetize videos on the platform. Much of the site's content was homemade and produced by hobbyists with no plans for making money on the site. The first targeted advertising on the site came in the form of participatory video ads, which were videos in their own right that offered users the opportunity to view exclusive content by clicking on the ad.
The first such ad was for the
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
show ''
Prison Break
''Prison Break'' is an American serial (radio and television), serial drama television show, television series created by Paul Scheuring for Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox. The series revolves around two brothers, Lincoln Burrows (Dominic Purce ...
'' and solely appeared above videos on
Paris Hilton's channel.
At the time, the channel was operated by
Warner Bros. Records
Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of the ...
and was cited as the first brand channel on the platform.
Participatory video ads were designed to link specific promotions to specific channels rather than advertising on the entire platform at once. When the ads were introduced, in August 2006, YouTube CEO
Chad Hurley
Chad Meredith Hurley (born January 24, 1977) is an American webmaster and businessman who serves as the advisor and former chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube. He also co-founded MixBit. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2.0's "5 ...
rejected the idea of expanding into areas of advertising seen as less user-friendly at the time, saying, "we think there are better ways for people to engage with brands than forcing them to watch a commercial before seeing content. You could ask anyone on the net if they enjoy that experience and they’d probably say no."
However, YouTube began running in-video ads in August 2007, with preroll ads introduced in 2008.
In December 2007, YouTube launched the Partner Program, which allows channels that meet certain metrics (currently 1000 subscribers and 4000 public watch hours in the past year) to run ads on their videos and earn money doing so.
The Partner Program allowed for the first time YouTube personalities to make a living from the platform.
During the 2010s, the ability for YouTubers to achieve wealth and fame due to success on the platform increased dramatically. In December 2010, ''
Business Insider
''Insider'', previously named ''Business Insider'' (''BI''), is an American financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Insider''s parent company Insider Inc. has been owned by the German publ ...
'' estimated that the highest earner on YouTube during the previous year was
Dane Boedigheimer
Dane Willard Boedigheimer (born September 28, 1978) better known by his stage name DaneBoe, is an American Internet personality, voice actor, writer, and animator. He is known for creating the web series ''The Annoying Orange'' and the spin-off ...
, creator of the web series ''
Annoying Orange
''Annoying Orange'' is an American live-action/animated comedy web series created by Dane Boedigheimer (known online as DaneBoe). The series follows an anthropomorphic orange who annoys fruits, vegetables, and various other objects by telling ...
'', with an income of around $257,000. Five years later, ''
Forbes
''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...
'' released its first list of the highest-earning YouTube personalities, estimating top earner
PewDiePie
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg ( , ; born 24 October 1989), better known as PewDiePie ( ), is a Swedish YouTuber known for his Let's Play videos and comedic formatted videos and shows. Kjellberg's popularity on YouTube and extensive media coverage ...
's income during the previous fiscal year at $12 million, more than some popular actors such as
Cameron Diaz
Cameron Michelle Diaz (born August 30, 1972) is an American actress. With a variety of works in film, she is widely recognised for her work in romantic comedies and animation. Diaz has received various accolades, including nominations for ...
or
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow (; born ) is an American actress and businesswoman. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Paltrow gained notice for her early work in films ...
. ''Forbes'' estimated that the tenth-highest earner that year was
Rosanna Pansino
Rosanna Pansino is an American YouTuber, actress, author and singer. Pansino is one of the highest-paid content-creators on YouTube, and was listed first on ''Forbes'' ''Top Influencers: Food'' list in 2017.
Pansino has hosted the internet ser ...
at $2.5 million. That year,
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
stated that "
vlog
A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded i ...
ging has become big business." The rapid influx of wealth within the YouTube community has led some to criticize YouTubers for focusing on earnings more than the creativity and connection with their fanbase that some claim was at the heart of the platform before expanded monetization. In August 2021, it was reported Kevin Paffrath made $5 million in just the first 3 months of 2021 and his YouTube analytics showed he made "several million" in ad revenue within the prior 12 months. By 2021, YouTuber earnings had expanded even more, with Forbes estimating that the highest earner that year was MrBeast at $51 million.
See also
Notes
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Internet culture
2000s neologisms