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Influence4you - a media and communication agency specializing in the relationship between brands and social media, blogging, and vlogging influencers - attempted to measure the impact of French YouTube beauty vloggers on the web. [1]

The agency scrutinised several key data: the time spent watching videos or reading articles, the presence and influence in social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. From a strictly quantitative point of view, the balance struck is heavily tilted in favour of YouTube vloggers.

The time spent (in thousands of minutes) on the main websites for women and on major YouTube beauty channels is roughly equivalent. Shortly speaking, the media influence of the leading French YouTube beauty vloggers is now as important as the leading websites for women. However, their audience is overwhelmingly aged 15-35 years, while websites for women connect with a much broader audience.

The comparison of the number of followers and of engagement rates on Facebook, also shows that YouTube beauty vloggers are on equal footing with leading websites for women. However, as far as other social media measured by the study (Twitter, Instagram) are concerned, YouTube vloggers clearly dominate. "Twitter is a privileged and popular communication channel for YouTube vloggers and for their viewers, which are younger than that of largest women’s sites. Therefore, they are fully invested in social media that allow direct communication with their followers," say the authors of the study. Regarding Instagram, the difference is even more marked, with hardly any female sites having a number of followers matching the numbers reached by YouTube vloggers.

What about bloggers?

Beyond the comparison between websites for women’ and YouTub beauty vloggers, Influence4you also compared the influence between bloggers and YouTube vloggers. Once again, from a purely quantitative point of view, the preponderance of YouTube vloggers is undeniable: their influence on social networks seems much higher.

However bloggers, which are somewhat older, have an established relationship with their readers and attract wider age groups. Bloggers also massively invest social media and many of them became influential YouTube vloggers. From the brand’s perspective, blogs also have the advantage of an easier integration of advertisements. According to Influence4you: "Bloggers and YouTube vloggers should be opposed as they appear as being somewhat complementarity.

To summarize, YouTube beauty vloggers now have a large audience and an unparalleled presence in social media. These quantitative assets add up to the unique characteristics of video media, which is rather well suited to the beauty and fashion sectors, and to the personal endorsement and intimacy, provided by the YouTube vlogger. However, their audience is highly targeted on the 15-35 years. For most mainstream brands, a media strategy that would only target YouTube vloggers would therefore not be optimum, as they may lose touch with large part of the market.