YouTube has hosted a plethora of influencer marketing campaigns, helping a variety of brands to tap into new markets and increase their revenue. Tensor Social has just released its latest report, detailing how influencer marketing has grown on Youtube in 2021. Netinfluencer will explore the key findings of the 2021 YouTube Creator Economy Year in Review Report by Tensor Social and discuss how they impact the wider parts of the industry. 

Who conducted the survey?

The 2021 YouTube Creator Economy Year in Review report was conducted by Tensor Social in collaboration with NeoReach. Tensor Social uses a range of AI features to help brands and agencies find the best influencer for their next campaign. NeoReach works to collate large amounts of data to help businesses build effective campaigns and set realistic KPIs for their projects. This report explores how YouTube evolved over the course of 2021 and which industries were seeing the most growth. 

Survey Methodology

The data from this report was collected from all of the sponsored YouTube videos posted in January-December 2021. In order to be considered, these videos had to have at least 10,000 views and were compliant with FTC disclosure regulations.

This resulted in a sample size of 28,000 YouTube videos. To better refine this data, Tensor Social only accepted YouTube videos of influencers from North America, particularly the United States and Canada.   

As such, this report does not assess all of the sponsored content on YouTube found in 2021 but does discuss the influencer marketing budgets of some of the world’s leading brands. 

Three Key Takeaways

1. The total IMV of Influencer Marketing on YouTube in 2021 was over $603.9 million.
2. The top ten spenders reached over 14.3 billion users in 2021, amassing a combined total of 1 billion views.
3. The top five industries investing in YouTube Influencer Marketing are Tech, Gaming, Food & Drink, Beauty, and Fashion.

What does this mean for influencer marketing? 

Tensor Social offers an expansive analysis of the influencer marketing industry, particularly on YouTube. These main findings help us to predict future trends and have more confidence in the industry as a whole.

The first finding describes Influencer Media Value (IMV), a metric that determines the overall value of a creator’s content. Tensor Social informs us that the qualifying brands operated in the top 18 industries and managed to reach 44.2 billion users. Thus, the platform infers that these brands have managed to make a profitable impression on the platform and were able to see an abundance of organic growth.

Next, the report discusses which brands spent the most on their YouTube influencer marketing campaign. There are ten brands in total with the top three being Honey, Express VPN, and Gfuel. Tensor Social goes on to explain that the top three brands have continued to see success over the past two years, further signifying their increasingly high budgets. All ten brands managed to reach a combined total of 14.3 billion users and invested $164 million in their campaigns. 

Finally, the third finding explores the most prominent industries within YouTube influencer marketing. These five industries spent a total of $442 million on their respective campaigns and managed to amass over 3 billion views. According to the 2020 report, Tech, Gaming, and Food & Drink remain the three top spenders. This elucidates that these industries have seen the most growth on YouTube and within the influencer marketing industry. 

Link to the survey

The 2021 YouTube Creator Economy Year in Review Report can be found on Tensor Social’s website. Here, you can also learn more about their services and data science reports.