Here at Twofivesix, we spend some time each week reviewing trends and recent events, and analyzing the nuances and opportunities of different channels, platforms, and audiences in the world of games.

Recently, we’ve been talking about YouTube. It’s definitely no secret that gaming on YouTube is a pretty big deal, with five of the top ten highest-paid YouTubers being gamers, Activision Blizzard signing a multiyear partnership to exclusively stream their esports leagues on the platform, and PewDiePie still going strong with 107 million subscribers after 10 years of content. But with all the flashy numbers and big-name influencers in the market, it can be hard to actually see what gaming on YouTube really looks like.

In this episode, Twofivesix CEO Jamin Warren spoke with content strategist Paolo Yumol and junior audience strategist Lyn Rafil to discuss how YouTube fits into the larger online media ecosystem, why people actually watch gaming on YouTube, and the hurdles that brands face when trying to break into the space.

You can listen to the episode using the player embedded above, or you can read a full transcript below.

Episode Transcript

Jamin:

Hey there, so normally we do interviews. We thought we’d try something a little bit different. This time you’re going to hear from a couple of members of our team. It’s our first round table approach. Love to know what you think, but we hope you like it.

All right. Let’s jump right into it. Thanks everybody for joining me. I’ve Got Lyn and Paolo here. Lyn and Paolo, give a brief introduction in terms of who you are and what you do for Twofivesix.

Lyn:

Yeah, I’m Lyn, I’m the junior audience strategist at Twofivesix, so I handle a lot of the strategic work, understanding audiences, trends and being able to translate that into different opportunities and thought starters for our clients to be able to take forward into the world.

Jamin:

Awesome, Paolo.

Paolo:

Hey, I’m Paolo, I use they/them. I’m a content strategist here at Twofivesix. I’m responsible for a lot of our creative output and assist on the strategy side as well.

Jamin:

Awesome. Now, we’ve been doing these ideas round tables every Friday. Lyn’s been doing a great job putting this together, and we thought that we would share one with all of you based on some of the work that we’ve been doing internally and just chatting about internally. One of the big things that we’ve been looking at is YouTube. A lot of folks take YouTube for granted. We’re getting at this stage now where many digital platforms are getting “long in the teeth,” but gaming has a very special part to play in YouTube’s lifecycle and developments. One of the biggest categories on the platform, it doesn’t often get as much direct attention as some YouTubers or influencers do, but is by far and away, one of the most popular things that people use YouTube for.

With that note, I want to talk a little bit about maybe just the general landscape. What do you all think about some of the connections between YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch? What’s the intersection? Because I think we’re getting to this place now where you have to think holistically, obviously about each one of these platforms, and inside of each one of these platforms. There’s a lot of different varieties, but talk a little bit about maybe how YouTube intersects with other platforms outside of itself. Maybe Lyn, if you want to kick us off.

Lyn:

Yeah. I really like to talk about how we live in this multi-channel digital age where no content really, truly lives by itself in isolation. With all of these other, especially “newer platforms” with TikTok and Twitch, and all the different iterations is that a creator will often be on all of them. So, if you’re streaming on Twitch, that definitely has a certain interpersonal connection being live. You’re on there for a couple of hours at a time. You take the highlights of that, you cut them up, you make it the most interesting snappy short-form content that you can put on YouTube. The VOD system on Twitch can sometimes be a little bit hard to go through and isn’t necessarily the easiest for new viewers to look through.

But if it’s on YouTube, where a lot of people are a little bit more well-versed, they’ve spent several more years being able to adjust to the platform and how it’s grown, being able to put the highlights, the top-level stuff on YouTube. You might be able to gain a new audience, you might be able to gain an audience strictly on YouTube, who might not be watching your stuff on stream, but they’ll be able to be part of your community in a different facet. Then with TikTok and Instagram, a lot of these are also just being able to create even shorter forms of content so that they all work together in this larger ecosystem of building awareness, building visibility, and being able to connect with fans on different levels, where their community is at.

Jamin:

Yeah. I look forward to the next platform, it’d like one-second videos, microsecond videos, some new like digital platform. What are some of those differences between, it’s interesting because you’re trying to find, like it’s … at the end of the day, a lot of times for gaming content. There’s a lot of different types, and some of it’s educational, some of it’s focused on more personality-based like through livestreaming. What are some of those differences between the different types of content? What, if you’re a gaming creator or a brand that’s thinking about the gaming space, what might be some of the different considerations that you might have between taking the same piece of content, how it might express itself on TikTok versus Twitch versus Instagram? Because these platforms are all different at the end of the day.

Paolo:

We know from the 2019 study that we reviewed of insights about YouTube audience and behaviors, that they really value instructional content and content that caters towards really niche interests that they have. I’ll notice this too, with some of the streamers that I follow. I follow a lot of them. Just really into Hearthstone Battlegrounds at the moment, so I’m just like watching a lot of those. It’s sort of my first foray into the streaming world as like a viewer, but notice that streamers will take VODs highlights from their normal like Twitch streams, and then they’ll reposition them as a how-to guide, how to play a certain hero, play a certain strategy for YouTube, but makes it appear more evergreen, but it’s really just like taking a highlight from yesterday’s stream and positioning it in that way. I feel like that’s an effective way of responding to the way that YouTube as a platform operates and what its audience tends to look for.

Jamin:

Yeah. No, that’s such a great point.

Lyn:

I think there are also some interesting platform-specific limitations that content creators have to think about, whether it’s like the differences of how each, I guess arcane algorithm works that content creators are guessing at, but also with tech talk, for example, all of the videos there have a max cap at one minute. They might also be doing clips and highlight reels there, but they’re going to specifically narrow in on very small moments that will grab your attention so you’re not just swiping through your For You Page, and just skate on by. Whereas, when using YouTube, you can have longer-form content, but again, as you mentioned, it will be framed in a different way, either super personality-based, so you’ll just laugh the whole time, or it’ll be like a supercut of getting scared the pants off of, or it’ll be very instructional and be particularly deep.

What is nice for a lot of Twitch streamers who also create content on YouTube, I think is Paolo, as you were mentioning, being able to reframe it, but it also gives people an instance to go back over what they had previously filmed and add additional commentary or edit it down to something that they also see is very valuable for their audiences and for the people playing their games. That there’s a give and take in that relationship as well. That they’re able to do different things on their platforms that might suit the needs of whoever it might be stumbling upon them.

Jamin:

I think it’s a hedge too, right? That’s part of it as well, is I think, particularly after Vines closure, for example, there were a lot of creators who ended up having their communities completely abandoned. I spoke to a YouTube game influencer last year, and that was one thing that he was saying. He’s very active on YouTube, but also was very active early on TikTok and also on Instagram. It’s a lot of work, but the way that he framed it was like, I just want to make sure that I don’t have all my eggs in one basket. It’s like a portfolio approach where he’s looking for ways to … and there’s also these considerations as well, like each of the platforms has technical considerations, but also there’s stylistic ones as well. So, it is a very interesting approach, I think a new challenge for this generation of social content creators to be thinking about, okay, I need to have a point of view that’s expansive enough that can live in all of these different places without me having to completely reinvent myself every single time I publish something to the internet.

Paolo:

I just feel like there’s certain things that are specific to gaming in that it reaches like a lot of different people in a lot of different kinds of ways. For instance, unlike a lot of other media, I think to be somebody who’s interested in gaming, probably entails that you’re an active participant. Like, you’re a gamer, you take part in experiences themselves. I think the reason why instructional content, for instance, might appeal to gamers is because, on the one hand, you’re able to spectate people who might be phenomenally good at their particular game, at their particular skillset. You might be absorbing it just because you wanted to watch people like perform really well. But you also might want to see if they have any guidance to impart on you as a player yourself.

I feel like there’s a multitude of different formats, I think will be appealing to different people, whether they are like reaction videos or whether they’re instructional or whether it’s like the Kotaku highlight reel, I guess no longer Kotaku, highlight reel type content where it’s a specific gawking at glitches and video games. I think there’s a multitude of different kinds of video formats that work for this audience, which I think provides a lot of potential to people who are hoping to be creators entering the space.

Jamin:

Yeah. I think the educational portion of YouTube, speaking as a former educational content creator, the educational side of YouTube, I think is one of these things that when we talk about YouTube is really unique and distinct to that platform. I feel like we have this conversation with other non-gaming things. Like sourdough bread making, for example, was huge this year. I frequently am going to YouTube with a very specific question in mind, and the way that we interact with YouTube, sometimes it’s broadcast, like you’re subscribing to different channels, but in many instances, and this is born out by YouTube’s own research, in terms of like why people use YouTube, is like the desire to learn something new.

I think is one of these things that I feel like YouTube, people, when they think about YouTube from a brand standpoint, education is not something that they’re thinking about. But it really is a place where people fundamentally go to learn something new, and when playing games, there’s so many things that you want to look up when you’re playing games, whether it’s like how to be a particular level, or if you’re trying to build your own PC, if it’s Harvard related questions, or there’s so much of that stuff that you can just go to YouTube and find. I think that’s a very … I don’t know. Do you all feel that way? I feel like when people talk about gaming YouTube, I don’t think the educational element. It’s like, people talk about PewDiePie, or the most popular streamer on the platform and not thinking about, where are the very functional, transactional ways that people interact with gaming content on YouTube. That seems to not be … that seems, I don’t know, when people talk about YouTube as a gaming brand, that’s not something that comes up.

Lyn:

I definitely agree. I think that this is one of the kind of difficulties that I know that we experience or that some of our clients have experienced in trying to be able to really say, hey, gaming is valuable in the sense that people only view it as raw entertainment, and entertainment mindlessly, and fail to realize what makes gaming really entertaining for a lot of ways. In some elements, it’s like the social aspect. Other elements, it’s about overcoming challenges. It can be learning, it could be distraction. It could be narrative, lore. It could be a whole variety of different reasons why people are entertained by it. Paolo, like you were saying, it is also a medium in which people are active participants in creating that entertainment as well or being able to receive that entertainment, where this might be a controversial statement, but I think most people enjoy video games when they’re good at them, or when they can do it.

I think that, I don’t know, for me personally, I find … sometimes I do like a frustrating challenge, but I like the frustration because hopefully at the end of it, I overcome it, and that part is what feels good and why I want to keep playing games. But there are so many elements of games themselves that are educational or are historical or storytelling based and interactive and entertaining in ways that we see other things really take off on YouTube. In terms of inspiration for DIY projects, for instance, sometimes it can be learning how to get into carpentry and create your own coffee table, and sometimes it is how to make a really cool thing in Minecraft. A lot of these things can be … it’s entertaining because maybe this person is really fun and engaging, but I’m also maybe learning something along the way, regardless of whether or not I will actually build a full replica of the Smithsonian in Minecraft, or build myself a coffee table, sometimes it’s just the idea of, hey, I can watch this person and feel inspired, motivated, and educated to maybe do that somewhere along the way.

Jamin:

Yeah.

Lyn:

That completely goes unrecognized, because the really big personalities, the way that marketers tend to leverage those personalities is not through those means. Or at least they don’t think about it through those means, that they’re not thinking of like Jacksepticeye as someone who is teaching people things, even though he very well is in a lot of situations.

Paolo:

I have a hypothesis.

Jamin:

Do it. Tell us about the hypothesis.

Paolo:

I’m just curious what you both think. I feel like gaming on YouTube was really instrumental and cultivating like the sort of ecosystem of parasocial relationships that people have to gaming-related creators today. Like we’ve talked about, I think there are a ton of different channels through which you might be able to maintain these parasocial relationships. Nowadays, TikTok is one way, Instagram is one way, Twitter, and now Twitch, and YouTube Live. I remember, when I was a freshmen in college, I first encountered the “let’s play” format because there were a couple people in my dorm who were really into watching Markiplier play Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I think that was when this new genre of horror game entertainment was beginning to germinate.

Jamin:

It’s perfect for clips.

Paolo:

Yeah, exactly. It’s perfect for that. It’s also, if you … it’s like a way of vicariously, at least for specifically, since I’m such a wimp at playing horror games. There’s a way of vicariously experiencing games that I thought were really interesting and interesting from a design perspective, but also just very viscerally entertaining to watch. I feel like over the years, because all of these new channels have emerged, I get the sense that gaming creators on YouTube have been forced to think a little bit more strategically, how it fits in the wider ecosystem of channels that they might own. And I think before, in the “let’s play” era, and frankly like the vlogging era, when maybe Twitch wasn’t as big as it was and live streaming wasn’t as big as it was, it was a primary way of people being able to foster these parasocial relationships with the creators influencers that they really liked.

But I think now it’s just … I feel like if you’re a creator on the platform, your YouTube strategy has to be really specific to the medium.

Jamin:

Yeah. Yeah, it does definitely … I think this idea … Yeah, I think there is this really fundamentally interesting relationship between the types of games that you play or the space that you occupy that you have to consider as a creator. It’s, what’s your skill level going to be, what is the nature of this game? It’s different versus something like Twitch, where it’s much more active, where there’s this push and pull between, what are people playing at this moment? There’s so much that’s placed on the immediacy of what’s big right now and a lot less focus on this sort of back catalog, whereas with YouTube, there is, because YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet, there is definitely this like long tail that you can be considering where the types of things that you’re putting up there need to be …

I don’t know, in some ways it’s like a way of thinking about what does evergreen content look like on something like YouTube, or something like Twitch, and yeah, finding ways to instrumentalize that as a creator I think is really important, and frankly, it’s been very hard. Yeah, volume always helps. I guess there is no penalty, I guess at some level, by producing a lot. You have a lot to ultimately work with. I guess, along those lines, how do you see, we’ve been talking a bit about particularly the educational side of something like YouTube, how do you see brands playing into that space? So, you have this behavior on YouTube as a platform that’s distinct to YouTube, particularly for gaming. How do you tap into that? How do you build an audience that it’s distinct to the YouTube gaming audience, that might be different from other channels?

Lyn:

I think one of the things that I know that I frequently, either, if not directly say, but I’m thinking internally from my point of view for research and strategy work is to really view YouTube as not just being a singular channel and therefore really approaching the gaming audience as a really complicated and nuanced space, where there’s actually more opportunities rather than just saying, I need to score the biggest influencers to be able to get any traction in the gaming sphere, is the recognition that a lot of people who are part of the YouTube gaming ecosystem are also part of the YouTube ecosystem. Also, very few people, I think, are only in one niche. I think that what we’re saying with that, there are a lot of like niche communities that there’s a lot of specificity specialization. A lot of people have crossover in ways that you can get some of those people who are watching Markiplier and Jacksepticeye and PewDiePie.

You can get a lot of those people through the other educational games, that you don’t necessarily need to be on their channels in order to get some of their audience. And it might even be more beneficial to not go for the really wide net that you can go from these smaller creators that you can say, oh, I have an even better understanding of your audience. Your audience is very into, I don’t know, farming simulator, that you have a very specific, dedicated group of people, and just by some social listening, observation, you can tell that these people might actually be more suited to what your brand values might align with or demographics wise. So many things that your own audience strategy might be paying attention to that I think a lot of brands have really done well at utilizing micro-influencers on Instagram and Twitter, but not so much on the YouTube lens, especially in terms of gaming YouTube. There’s all these really big fish that you forget that there’s a whole ocean of creators out there.

Jamin:

Yeah.

Paolo:

There’s a particular hurdle that I think like brands have to overcome if they want to produce instructional content on the platform, and it’s simply that, like the gaming audience is incredibly skeptical of anybody who positions themselves as an authority on pretty much anything. I think, I’m thinking mostly of the infamous, like Verge PC building video, it becomes this thing that gets posted on Reddit and spreads like wildfire. I feel it’s unfortunate that I think really horrible content has much more of a potential to like make an imprint on this audience than something that does really well. I feel like a challenge like with this particular platform is that you have to be able to anticipate people really scrutinizing the content that you produce, and really scrutinizing the people that you purport to be the sources of authority on any given subject matter. But if you succeed, then you really succeed. If you’re lying to Sebastian, then you like get to have this sort of corner of YouTube that people are really obedient towards.

Jamin:

Yeah. I think also like planning for that long-term. There is an extent to which like you’re looking to build, as a brand, hopefully, one is like determining what is your value? What is the value that you’re adding to this ecosystem? Is it, are you authenticating a particular behavior? Are you facilitating something? Is it pure instruction? If you’re like a brand that, even if you’re a brand outside of gaming, maybe you have a particular product that would be very useful to someone in a gaming ecosystem, so if you’re a TV maker or a headset manufacturer or whatever, there’s value that you could add to this ecosystem, and that’s not just like how to use this product. I think that there’s an extent to which like brands have to figure out what are the questions that people are asking currently and how are we uniquely positioned to help gamers answer that question?

Because that’s something that I think gaming influencers do naturally because they’re very community-oriented so they’re constantly listing for, what should I play next, what are you interested in? So, I think it could be hard for brands to sublimate what they want to say, and say, “Okay, so how can I push this through the lens of gaming? Because I think that the long tail side of YouTube can be really powerful. I used to host PBS Game Show. We did an episode on like the history of monopoly, and it didn’t do that well when we republished it. Then like, over the long-term, and now is like over 2 million views, just because, over the longterm, people were just looking for stuff that’s related to Monopoly.

It wasn’t an expected outcome that this was going to be the most successful episode that we ever did, but that you do have the potential there, and I think that’s the other piece of different brands. You need to be thinking about YouTube creators, in particular, it’s not lightning in a bottle. It’s the sum total of micro-video, consistent release schedule over a long period, much longer period of time. I feel like YouTube is alike in that way. Obviously you can boost things with paid and get things to the top of the radar, but in terms of building a long-term YouTube strategy, you really need to be thinking about, what’s the consistent messaging that you’re going to be providing, because if not, then you can be looking to other places, hosting somebody else’s channel, do something else in a different ecosystem, just focus on paid advertisement, Pre-Roll, things like that. Yeah, YouTube is definitely very unique in that respect.

Lyn:

I think it’s also, it speaks to what maybe the brand or business goals of being on YouTube are. If it’s the sense of becoming a trusted voice in this community, that Paolo, as you were saying, it doesn’t happen quickly and it could erode way faster than it is built. But in the sense of being able to create content, not necessarily for super mind-boggling engagement rates, winning a Cannes Lion, like all of those things. There are different goals for actively producing content on YouTube, for YouTube, for the gaming community, that there may be other opportunities where you can either leverage the trust of an already established member of the gaming community on YouTube, or really start from square one to be able to formulate that kind of strategy and trust over time.

If that is investment that you’re willing to make, that you don’t necessarily need to be the top of everyone’s radar, instantaneously, that you’re okay with this being a project that as you said takes two years, but then ultimately becomes a very insightful video for something that someone just curiously searches for that in and of itself becomes a really organic moment of trust-building and a value add for the gaming community, where you provide this moment of what feels like serendipity almost where it’s, oh, I cannot believe someone made this video of this really specific question I had and they posted it in 2017. That makes zero sense to me, but here I am very grateful for it. What else do they have?

Because this was three years ago and maybe new stuff is here and I can look at it and it’ll be good. That kind of speaks to the way that YouTube gets used, where I think they do try and prioritize recent videos for large creators, that there’s a trending section and all of that. But as you said, it’s also a search engine, and the second largest search engine. If you can answer a question that someone is looking for, then you have done your job, and it might not necessarily be splashy, but if you can answer a question, anyone who approaches you is going to say, I trust that because now I know and I’m maybe better for it.

Jamin:

Hopefully better for it. What were some of the trends that maybe were surprising to you? Well, Lyn, we spend a bunch of time talking previously about some of the overall trends for YouTube, in particular as it relates to gaming. Was there anything that was surprising or notable for you in terms of looking at YouTube’s own research, but also from your own observations of how content grows or doesn’t grow on the space?

Paolo:

The report said that, the younger you are, the more you prefer short-term content. But the thing that’s been surprising to me recently has been the amount of longer form videos that seem to accumulate a high amount of attention for different … I’m thinking of, and this is more on the critical video essay side of YouTube. I haven’t spent a ton of time watching NoClip or Game Makers Toolkit too, I think. Then sometimes like Digital Foundry will also post these really long videos, these really technical deep dives into stuff, but I’m consistently surprised at how many views those videos get. I think there’s something to that. I think, especially, as we’ve talked about internally as company before, I think there’s … as YouTube has slowly started to become this, now that it’s like on people’s smart TVs, it just becomes the thing that you watch after work.

It’s no longer the YouTube of my youth, which was just like looking up just random videos from somebody with, I don’t know, it’s like a thousand views or something, a hundred views on like a video of just like a pigeon walking down a staircase or something like that. I feel like now it’s become a platform that people are willing to spend more time on and take more seriously. Yeah, I don’t know. I’m just interested in what it takes to hold people’s attention on it, because it’s clear that people are capable of doing that. But yeah, I don’t know. It seems like there are a lot of different strategies for executing things like that.

Lyn:

Yeah. I think what was, to your point also, what was interesting with the YouTube trend report was that things like production quality didn’t rank particularly high on the reasons why people are looking at things. Even though I see so many comments, just being online or on Reddit or wherever, where people are like very much clearly care about production quality, but I feel like it’s so often couched under a different thing that matters more to them or it’s secondary to what really matters, which is the production quality of this was bad, which means that I couldn’t learn what I wanted to learn, or I care about this celebrity, even though the presence of big-name celebrities was fairly low on that list of what people were interested in is, for one thing, how do we define a celebrity now, is a very good question, but it now becomes a matter of, I don’t really see this person as a celebrity because the reason why I know about them and like them and feel that they are popular and famous is because they produce something that I care about.

It’s something where I can dive deeper into an interest of mine, which I think was the number one or number two spot for most of the reasons and most of the countries that they surveyed, where it’s more about the intent and less about the execution, maybe, about how people are perceiving the content that is on YouTube. Yes, we care that it’s not the worst quality thing, but there are a lot of people who are willing to suffer through bad audio quality if the rest of the content is really thorough and engaging. Not everyone who streams on Twitch or YouTube gaming also will have a camera on them. Some people now expect it because it’s a norm, but if they are really engaging or informative or really skilled, you can get away with not being a personality. There are all of these different reasons why people are more attracted to content and willing to give their time to that content.

Either it is an extended three-hour-long history of the Destiny 2 lore, which I may or may not have been listening to earlier today, or it is along the lines of just watching the videos that come up in the auto-play features, that there are different reasons why you were willing to sit through those things. Sometimes I let the algorithm tell me what I want to watch, and sometimes it is right, and that is fine because I learned some interesting things, or even if I wasn’t searching for it, this is the answer to a question I never thought I’d ask. I didn’t actually ask it, but now it’s answered, solve that mystery. But there are things like that where I’m willing to keep watching, because … not because of production quality or anything like that.

It was surprising to see, but not surprising to understand once I was really thinking about it on that trend report, like it’s an expectation that your production is good enough that you’re not embarrassed to publish, and that is about it. It’s a low bar.

Paolo:

I’d suspect that the absence of a preference for high production value or production quality on videos is also just the result of, I don’t know, valuing like an intimate relationship to the creator. Or valuing, like having this sort of feeling as though you understand their life situation and who they are. I feel like in that sense, I can see why it wouldn’t be … because I think the things that you associate with high production value or that it’s like, you are aware that this person has a team of people working behind them. I think there’s something really special about the vlogger viewer relationship in the sense of … we’ve talked about the psychological effects that I’m seeing a streamer’s bedroom has on a viewer. The fact that there seems to be a prevailing aesthetic or just a prevailing strategy for how you frame your space, what it looks like.

Making sure that it still feels relatable, Ninja’s like bare-bones bedroom with just like a Red Bull fridge, it’s in this insane mansion.

Jamin:

It’s just the camera that’s turned in a particular way. It’s like a set, you know what I mean? If you pull back from the camera, it’s like an artificial room set inside of this enormous house.

Paolo:

Yeah. You wouldn’t want to see him streaming from his foyer or something or like a gilded staircase behind him. Obviously, that wouldn’t come off as authentic in the way that I think people want him to.

Lyn:

Unless you’re a part of FaZe Clan, then it might be super authentic.

Paolo:

Oh yeah, I guess-

Lyn:

The opposite end of the spectrum. No, but I think that’s a good point of like, having again, grown up with so much of the vlogger style content, really back when VidCon was super huge, all of these different things, where I think that so many people who are on YouTube now, not necessarily as content creators, but people who are even just watching understand that so much of the YouTube ecosystem, even if it’s a false idea of what the YouTube ecosystem is, this idea of this is an amateur creator. They started from nothing. They did this in their home, and they have built their way up to be able to having nice cameras and box lights and pseudo studio setup. They built themselves up from this. Before it was just their MacBook camera and they were trying their hardest.

You don’t really know, most people for most content creators, you don’t know what their situation was when they first started, but there is this really prevalent idea, and I think that YouTube as a company really, really exaggerates this point of view of like our content creators are individuals, our content creators are people who were amateurs that have dedicated time and passion to make things, where that’s the idea that hasn’t really escaped YouTube. Maybe there’s a little bit more jadedness and cynicism about the digital content creation age with especially a lot of content creators speaking out on the ways that a lot of this glamorized, pick-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality isn’t true. But I do think that is a particular component of how people say, I don’t really expect high production value. I can forgive a lack of production value, because that’s what going to YouTube means, is I’m not watching TV. It’s like you say to yourself, I can throw that expectation out the window, even when you don’t.

Jamin:

Yeah.

Paolo:

I also think like to your earlier point, I do think that people care about … I think people want to feel as though like, when they hit subscribe, they’re like directly supporting this person. I think that’s what people value about the audience streamer dynamic on a platform like Twitch too. I feel like they want to feel as though their donation of bits matters. It has like a palpable effect on this person’s life. I feel it might be in a streamer’s interest to be fully transparent about where they are and what kind of resources they have access to. Because let’s say, if you subscribed to me, if you donate to me, I can afford a nicer camera. I can afford to make better content for you.

Jamin:

That second property. I think the last thing I want to talk about, at least for today, is just on the brand channel development side. Was there anything that was surprising going through the best practices for developing a brand channel? Was there anything that was surprising in terms of what YouTube guidance is in terms of what they find or best practices? Because there’s, with all of these platforms, it’s like, there’s the way that the platform conceives of itself, which is related to their long-term product roadmap in terms of the product, what they want to happen. Then there’s the reality on the ground in terms of what’s actually popular, how creators are actually using this thing. That’s a totally different thing. Brands often have to navigate those two things between what the sort of official guidance is versus what’s going to be perceived as authentic. As it relates to like marketing to gamers, was there anything that was surprising in terms of what those best practices are?

Lyn:

I think it wasn’t so much like surprising in terms of what they were saying, it just wasn’t particularly … I think it was surprising in how little was surprising about it. It is very much the kind of things about develop a community, be open to feedback, make content that is good, where it’s like, they don’t really … it would be hard for them as a company to actually fully substantiate what that means, because you want to be able to encourage both brands and independent content creators to create content that you can serve to people, which they don’t want to narrow anyone into a certain box of the kinds of content to create. But I do think that, I know what we’ve talked a lot about for us and for our clients is that, what’s that value add thing about, you’re not necessarily going to be successful on YouTube if it’s not aligning to what your business goals are and also to what you can bring to the gaming community.

We’ve talked about how a lot of branded channels do a lot of stuff that’s a little bit outside of what they actually do as a company. We talk about Red Bull and Nike and all of these other channels that create a lot of content that, from a messaging standpoint, makes sense for them to be aligned to, but it does necessitate them to really think creatively and to invest a lot of time and energy and resources into developing this content that is more about sending a message as opposed to being like, buy our product. Whereas there is also a pretty strong opportunity for maybe more closely endemic brands to actually talk about their products and why people should buy them, like taking on that educational aspect, being a troubleshooting role, being able to do all those things. There is value to that they can bring.

Whereas I don’t necessarily think Red Bull would super benefit from just telling people, “Red Bull, it’s a drink,” and stuff like that, where it really does super depend on the willingness to invest in something that might be a little out of the box in those respects that you’re not really going to be able to get much guidance from YouTube to tell you what content is going to work well for you, because the content that’ll work well for you is going to be the content you make that is good for what you need it to do.

Jamin:

I think, as it relates to gaming, also, one thing I think I’ve been consistently surprised by is in general, there’s so many opportunities to experiment on YouTube. But there’s a sense in which … I think there are other platforms where the feedback from a gaming community is far more immediate and there are bigger opportunities, like areas of concern. Twitter is a great example. Twitch is a great example. And what ends up happening is that brands, when they’re thinking about something like YouTube, I think there’s a real concern that like, hey, if we do something on YouTube or experiment with just like a playlist on YouTube, it won’t be perceived the right way. It runs the risk. I guess I feel like, but just the ability because of the asynchronous nature of YouTube, and obviously you can live stream on YouTube as well, but it makes it very ripe to try something new or try something, just … If you want to dip your toe in the water and be less concerned about the long-term repercussions, the lift is a lot lower.

I think most brands have a YouTube channel, whereas like with Twitch, they may not necessarily have an active presence. There’s a big lift in terms of starting a Twitch channel. With Twitter, you run the risk of, it’s hard. I think Twitter makes it very difficult to deal with the … to have multiple personalities on Twitch, so if you’re a big multipurpose brand, that’s a lot of different things that you’re doing. Twitter flattens all of that into a single feed. One of the things about YouTube that I think is really interesting is that for brands who are interested in looking for ways to experiment with doing something in video, not only are there clear guidelines on what kind of content is popular on YouTube, but you can just like, let’s just try this and see how it works and then let it sit, and then go back to the drawing board and see how things are. In a way that like, the other social channels, it’s very difficult to do stuff like that.

In large part, because I think YouTube does make it much easier for channel creators to be able to say, this is what’s going on the homepage, this is our playlist. There’s a deeper ability to be able to control that in a way that I think, if you’re a brand that’s doing stuff with gaming for the first time, it can be super intimidating to try and do something like that. We’re going to start our own Discord channel. We’re gonna start on Twitch channel. Okay, who’s going to be monitoring that? That’s just a huge lift. I think a lot of ways YouTube can be a really good complimentary, but also a good place to start. If you want to start with gaming content, that can be a great place to play. I don’t know. That’s something that I think has been interesting, the cost there, obviously the financial cost doesn’t have to be as high given what we’ve been talking about with the production value, but I also think that the risk or fear of failure in front of gaming audiences feels a lot lower on YouTube, provided that you’ve done your research, your homework.

You’re not putting yourself deliberately in harm’s way, but yeah, that was one of the things I think it was surprising for me in terms of looking at some of the best practices for a brand channel.

Paolo:

I also think it’s like, on the other hand, I think you have to be cognizant of the fact that even YouTube’s most successful creators are locked in an eternal and constant struggle against YouTube algorithms, like general lack of transparency about what it targets and what it sort of sweeps under the rug. I can imagine that if you’re a brand and you’re like experimenting, you have an experimental attitude towards the content that you publish on YouTube. If something isn’t performing well, it might not be because your content is bad, or it might not even have anything to do with any of these factors, like production value, etc. I think it might just be the algorithm. It might just be an unlucky time to have posted that piece of content. I feel like, on the other hand, I think there’s … as much as it’s ripe for opportunities to experiment, I think like you just have to be resilient.

If something isn’t working, just try a different strategy. Luckily the platform is flexible enough that it can accommodate like a ton of different formats at once. All of them related to gaming. I feel like there’s … if one thing doesn’t work, you can try another thing, but I think it’s cool. I don’t know.

Lyn:

It is cool, because from a brand standpoint, taking it as the idea of an independent content creator, if you take that as your mindset, that is a huge opportunity for trying new things and experimenting with different voices and formats and all of that, that brands can also use that to their advantage as well, where it’s a pretty open space, pretty open playing field.

Jamin:

All right. That’s time. Thank you both for joining me. It’s great. We’ll post some of the things that we referenced in the show notes, but yeah, thanks for you two for joining me. Maybe we’ll do another YouTube episode, so many more things. There’s so much, it’s hard to talk about YouTube as a thing. It’s like, there’s YouTube, and then you might as well be talking about the internet at this point, which is so much, it’s very hard to talk about it.

Lyn:

It really feel like that, but especially because YouTube is such a large portion of the internet. It’s hard to say. It’s like trying to talk about a continent in really broad strokes. If the internet is the world, then YouTube is its own continent. I don’t know, Google is an empire. I don’t know yeah, if that’s true, but it’s so big.

Jamin:

So big. YouTube. That should be a new tagline. YouTube, it’s huge.

Paolo:

It’s so big.

Jamin:

It’s just so big.

Lyn:

It’s just so big.