YouTube Beauty Video Views Up 65 Percent Year Over Year

Lifestyle brands and YouTube have a “beautiful” relationship, with a highly influential creator community that is constantly diversifying. According to a new study by Pixability, beauty video views have increased 65 percent year over year—with the top influencer, Zoella attracting over 10 million subscribers. Pixability found that of the 200 most-viewed beauty videos on YouTube, 86 percent of them were made by influencers, while 14 percent were made by beauty brands. Beauty naturally lends itself to creating an online community through video and photography, as consumers scour the internet for reviews and tutorials.

While many beauty brands such as Olay, Chanel and Sephora enjoy their own large following on YouTube, there remains a major gap between the views of brand videos vs. those of influencers. The top YouTube influencer videos saw a total 22 million engagements, while brand videos saw significantly less with 1 million. This trend will continue to be fueled by beauty influencers who build and maintain a loyal subscriber base through YouTube Community and across social media.

YouTube isn’t the only social network benefiting from the surge in beauty searches and sharing. Thanks to the emergence of new high-performing video advertising formats across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest, brands are able to take advantage of new ways to reach their target audiences. The top 200 beauty brands on Facebook share a combined 850 million page views, and the hashtag, #instabeauty on Instagram has seen over 7.7 million posts as of August 2016.

Twitter offers the unique opportunity to target ads at followers of influencers, such as Kylie Jenner’s 18 million followers. In this way, brands are creating a hybrid approach to marketing—utilizing paid ads that direct users to influencer accounts for even more exposure.

Beauty and influencers go together like eye shadow and mascara, and brands accept this to be true. Fashion and Beauty Monitor recently reported that 57 percent of beauty and fashion companies use influencers as part of their marketing strategies, while an additional 21 percent are also planning to add this strategy to their campaigns in the next year.

“By understanding the unique advertising offerings of each social video platform,” concludes Pixability in the report. “recognizing up-and-coming influencers, underserved audience segments, and emerging content categories; and experimenting with immersive experiences like livestreaming and augmented reality, beauty marketers can create engaging video experiences for the millions of passionate beauty mavens around the world.”

Featured photo credit: One Body Studios