NEW YORK: Vloggers are significantly more likely than TV or movie stars to influence millennial purchase intent but brands have yet to fully exploit the opportunities they offer a report has said.
Think tank L2 highlighted the relative influences of these sources in its latest Intelligence Report, on the subject of video. YouTube vloggers had a 62%-63% influence on young adults and teens compared to the 46%-49% exercised by TV and movie stars.
It pointed out that an average popular beauty vlogger video achieved some 438,770 video views and contrasted this with the monthly circulation of some leading magazine titles aimed at a similar demographic.
Thus, for example, Cosmopolitan sells 289,044 copies, while Marie Claire shifts 202,127 and Vogue 200,032.
Overall, beauty vloggers registered more than 700m video views every month, with popular channels attracting 15 times more views and 108 times more subscribers than those belonging to beauty and hair care brands.
But even those brands attempting to leverage partnerships with vloggers often "underutilised this advantage", the report said.
Some 17% of beauty and hair care brands posted content featuring vloggers on their social properties during the final quarter of 2014, but half of these same brands then failed to take advantage of the vloggers' huge audiences on their own YouTube channels.
L2 cited Clean & Clear as an example: the teen skincare brand had featured two popular YouTube vloggers – MayBaby and MamaMiaMakeup – on its brand channel, where video views could reach maybe 17,000, during this period.
But neither vlogger had mentioned the brand in their own videos which typically attract 1.5m views in the case of MayBaby and 371,000 in the case of MamaMiaMakeup.
Sponsoring product placement in videos by popular vloggers could be a better strategy L2 suggested.
This is an area where brands need to tread carefully and ensure transparency. In the UK, vloggers have recently been issued with new guidelines stressing the need to clearly identify when they are promoting a product.
Think tank L2 highlighted the relative influences of these sources in its latest Intelligence Report, on the subject of video. YouTube vloggers had a 62%-63% influence on young adults and teens compared to the 46%-49% exercised by TV and movie stars.
It pointed out that an average popular beauty vlogger video achieved some 438,770 video views and contrasted this with the monthly circulation of some leading magazine titles aimed at a similar demographic.
Thus, for example, Cosmopolitan sells 289,044 copies, while Marie Claire shifts 202,127 and Vogue 200,032.
Overall, beauty vloggers registered more than 700m video views every month, with popular channels attracting 15 times more views and 108 times more subscribers than those belonging to beauty and hair care brands.
But even those brands attempting to leverage partnerships with vloggers often "underutilised this advantage", the report said.
Some 17% of beauty and hair care brands posted content featuring vloggers on their social properties during the final quarter of 2014, but half of these same brands then failed to take advantage of the vloggers' huge audiences on their own YouTube channels.
L2 cited Clean & Clear as an example: the teen skincare brand had featured two popular YouTube vloggers – MayBaby and MamaMiaMakeup – on its brand channel, where video views could reach maybe 17,000, during this period.
But neither vlogger had mentioned the brand in their own videos which typically attract 1.5m views in the case of MayBaby and 371,000 in the case of MamaMiaMakeup.
Sponsoring product placement in videos by popular vloggers could be a better strategy L2 suggested.
This is an area where brands need to tread carefully and ensure transparency. In the UK, vloggers have recently been issued with new guidelines stressing the need to clearly identify when they are promoting a product.
Data sourced from L2; additional content by Warc staff
