Lopez adds 17 million views to 'Home' promo.

Can you imagine a day without seeing one advertisement? 

We're exposed to thousands of ads a day, even though we may not consider them as advertisements. Anything that makes someone think about a brand, is considered an advertisement. 

No longer are we only subjected to advertising through TV, billboards and magazines. It's hard to escape being advertised to in this day and age. I would personally love to experience a day when someone/thing is not constantly trying to sell me something. 

This brings me to the advertisement I saw when I clicked on a YouTube video, categorised under the "Popular in Australia" videos. 

'Jennifer Lopez: "Feel the Light"American Idol XIV' is the title of the video. It is a video of Lopez singing to the live Idol audience. She stands in the middle of the stage, dressed in a white gown that spreads into a large circle around her, allowing lights to create images onto her dress. 

"Feel the Light" is a song from the DreamWorks film 'Home', which opens this month. Throughout the performance, we see images of the characters of the film projected onto her dress. Idol usually gets 8-10 million viewers watching it live, which is an impressive number of people to be advertising to as one. 

On the same day of the performance, 19th of March, the video was uploaded to YouTube. After almost 10 days of the video being live, it has attracted 17.8 million views and counting. This is an incredible extra amount of people that have now been advertised to, with the little effort of uploading the video to YouTube. I personally wasn't expecting the performance to be an advertisement, but found the video engaging. 

Yes, there may be a portion of these viewers that had already seen the Idol episode and just wanted to witness it again, but you can safely assume the majority of the 17.8 million figure were new viewers, and therefore new people to be advertised to. 

YouTube allowed the target audience to grow from 8 million to 25 million. It just goes to show that a company can rapidly expand their target audience buy creating something engaging and then upload it to a social media platform.  

Another way that we've been advertised to, by a projection onto a dress. 

A Career in YouTube

'YouTuber'?
YouTuber, a term that has only come about in the last 5 years.
Someone that classifies themselves as a YouTuber, is usually employed by Google (who owns the video charing site). A YouTuber creates videos for the public to watch on the internet, and there are some very successful ones out there.

Swedish YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, commonly known as 'PewDiePie" currently has more than 35.5 million subscribers*, making him the most subscribed person on YouTube to date. Collectively, his videos have a total of 8 billion views. He is most known for reviewing games on the site, showing his reactions to gaming situations. He has an infectious personality and is quite entertaining. His content must be good if there are that many people who want to see his videos.

This is his most popular video, gaining almost 64 million views.
"A Funny Montage" showing various clips from his channel titled "PewDiePie"

Other notable YouTube personalities who have a large following...
Smosh (USA) 20+ Million
The Fine Bros (USA) 11+ Million
Zoe Sugg (UK) 7+ Million
Tyler Oakley (USA) 6+ Million
Caspar Lee (RSA) 4+ Million
Community Channel (AUS) 1+ Million

Making Money
As a regular YouTube user myself, I have been subjected to many advertisements through watching YouTube content. I have an application on my laptop called 'AdBlock' meaning that I don't see the ads before a video is played, but advertising companies have found many other ways to advertise to YouTube users.
Sponsorship
I have personally seen many videos on YouTube where the person is talking about a product that a company have sent them to 'try out'. Just by talking about the product is an effective way of advertising, as there can be millions of people who will see the video (depending on the YouTuber). For those popular YouTubers who regularly do reviews on beauty products, beauty companies will utilise the viewership and sponsor the YouTuber to talk about their product. I have heard many YouTubers say "I don't talk about a product unless I love it." But I doubt that this is always the case.
I also remember a video that I saw of two British YouTubers, Alfie Deyes and Marcus Butler, that travelled to Germany for an X-Box One convention.  The trip was paid for by X-Box.
In the following weeks, I saw that Sony sent Alfie a new PS4. He said that he didn't know he was getting it and it was out of the blue. X-Box utilised Alfies following of 2+ Million on his daily vlogging channel.
Sony then counteracted, and just sent him a PS4, hoping it would appear in one of his videos (which it did)
Promotions.
One other advertising techniques that I have noticed whilst using YouTube, is that of promotions.
Audible, a audio book company, have done many deals with several YouTubers. In the last month, I have seen 5+ YouTubers mention that if their viewers use a particular promotional code, they can get their first book free. It is a great way to penetrate the market, allow a user to experience the product and hope that they purchase a book in the future.

Even though I can block automated advertisements, I can't block out the product placements and sponsorships. And I have to admit, I have actually gone out and made a purchase, because one of my favourite YouTubers recommended the product. As new technologies develop, advertising companies react accordingly to maintain or gain audiences.

*Subscribers: users of YouTube who have the subscribed content on their YouTube page home page.  

"Snapchat Murders Facebook"

I recently came across a video on YouTube titled "Snapchat Murders Facebook." It was quite difficult to keep scrolling after reading that title. It was so good that after I watched the video, I clicked the subscribe button. The guy behind this channel is Casey Neistat. His videos are posted monthly, indicating that a lot of time and effort is put into his videos.

"Snapchat Murders Facebook" currently has 656,249 views, but I think it deserves more.
I love how social media can change so dramatically when something new comes along. In this case it's snapchat! In the video Casey asks people on the street "How often do you use Snapchat", they reply with "Everyday" and "The question is when do I NOT use snapachat?". They also go onto say that no-one really uses facebook any more.

Casey also explores how previous social media platform have risen to fame and then disappeared again. From friendster, myspace, facebook, instagram (bought by facebook for 1 billion) and Snapchat (declined facebooks offer of 3 billion).

"The reason why this [snapchat] is a 10 billion dollar big deal, is that no ones is yet to figure out video on mobile... Because the stories dissapear, there's a sense of urgency."

A company who refuses to sell for 3 billion dollars, deserves the title of "The future of social media."
Watch out facebook, you may be becoming the new myspace.