How COVID-19 is affecting some of the world’s biggest YouTubers

With the coronavirus restricting a majority of workers to their homes, how are those who have done it for years handling this challenge?

This article was written on June 26, 2020, with interviews conducted over the week prior.

The current COVID-19 pandemic that is spreading across the planet right now has raised a lot of questions about the world we live in, regarding issues such as healthcare, social distancing and working conditions. Millions are now either unemployed, on paid leave, or working from home. While this of course poses a massive problem, it has allowed industries to realise that remote working is possible for a whole new range of jobs.

But one industry that has been working from home since its conception is that of internet based entertainers. Content creators and internet personalities have threatened the rise of traditional television for years, so with big budget shows now being forced to film at home, is lockdown even affecting YouTubers at all?

Jordi van den Bussche, who has a subscriber count of 13 million as of June 2020, has benefitted from the pandemic. (Image: YouTube)

Jordi van den Bussche, known on YouTube as Kwebbelkop, creates gaming videos for an audience of 13 million subscribers. He argues that the coronavirus has actually impacted his channel in a positive way. “Views are up as if it’s a school holiday”, he tells me. With lockdown affecting schools and businesses, millions of children are stuck at home and turning to gaming content on YouTube.

However, Kwebbelkop’s huge fanbase has helped him keep momentum through the pandemic, a lot more YouTubers are suffering as a result. With companies being restricted, they are spending less money on marketing, which means that ad revenue on YouTube is currently plummeting. He speculates that once the pandemic is over, the return to normal revenue will take a while. “A lot of advertisers will be out of business or won’t have much money to advertise with. I would say another 6 months [after the pandemic ends] until things are back to normal(ish).”

“I don’t think it will hurt or help YouTube at all. It will damage the people who weren’t running at a big profit margin in the short term.” He continues. “I believe that YouTube and youtubers actually have it really good. There is a massive crisis and YouTube is a fairly steady source of revenue for thousands of people. The future is online.”

Although, while his channel may have been balanced out from a surge in viewers and drop in revenue, other YouTubers around the world have been affected in very different ways.

Martin Petrov makes videos around the game ‘Fortnite’, where he guides players on challenges and rewards. (Image: YouTube)

“Lockdown definitely made me less happy,” says Martin Petrov, known to his 2 million subscribers as Bodil40, “the first week or two were quite hard as most people around me were happy to stay home and work from home, while I was really only able to relax and get time off my work outside… where everything was closed.”

As is the case with a lot of gaming YouTubers, lockdown hasn’t put a restriction on the types of content that can be made – as many already worked from home – although it has had a major effect on morale and motivation.

“After grinding videos for 5-6 hours on update days, it feels super tiring to not be able to just go outside and exit your workspace.” says Petrov. “It makes you more likely to look at stats which is not good considering you can't really directly affect those.”

When asked about why he has been affected negatively compared to some other content creators, Petrov says: “I think most youtubers would reply more positively as some gained a lot of new subs/views around the lockdown. There are more people at home indeed, but they seem to just watch clickbait now. It's kinda how it was last summer, but I have a few friends who have channels that got less views during this time, so it's pretty weird.”

He speculates that the YouTube algorithm may have changed who it recommends due to an influx of new people clicking on a range of topics. “So I assume if you get paid like 10 times your normal salary, you wouldn’t mind a month or two in lockdown but for me, I got a lot more views [from in-game events] and also got about 35% of what I would have been paid normally, so it kinda sucked.”

SARS-CoV-2, the disease causing the current worldwide pandemic. (Image: WebMD)

Agreeing with the theme of revenue plummeting is YouTuber Daily Dose of Internet, who states that “the virus has nuked my CPM and morale is lower.” This trend of declining ad revenue is explained by Tommy Appleby, the owner of Visions Digital.

Appleby explains that "on the bright side of things people are at home watching videos more often so it's like, you know, at the end of the day if you double your views and your CPM gets cut in half technically speaking, things are just normal for you. You're just getting more viewers than normal and you might not see that revenue-wise but that's where it's important to understand the longer term strategy which is capturing market share. Look at all these late-night hosts, it's terrible - their content has nosedived and that comes with the extra viewership as well."

When asked if YouTubers and late-night hosts have ever been directly competing for market share like this, Appleby says “I mean technically speaking yes. Any people posting videos on YouTube are competition to YouTubers. Jimmy Kimmel is actually seeing his lowest month on YouTube since February 2019. Almost literally 14 or 15 months and that's genuinely just down to the fact that because he doesn't have millions of dollars of production budget quality or he doesn't have a stacked line of guests being able to come on his show - he's tanking. And from what it seems like, it's only getting worse."

Late night host Jimmy Kimmel, who has moved to a different format as a result of the pandemic and social distancing guidelines. (Image: LA Times)

So, to create an average of how exactly YouTubers are being affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems clear that a lot of those who already worked from home are either suffering from a loss in revenue or are gaining an influx of viewers and instead keeping a steady income. Someone like MrBeast, whose videos are focused on interacting with strangers, would be affected more than Kwebbelkop, who creates content from the comfort of his home.

Appleby focuses on this, stating that “MrBeast, he has a much larger organization and uh.. it's like one person tests for coronavirus and everything gets red tape over it. His videos are so immense on scale, it takes so many people to work together to accomplish it. How do you give money to people who are quarantining in their homes? How does that affect morale in your company? These are all questions that leaders are having to figure out."

For those wondering exactly why CPM is plummeting, Appleby concludes with an explanation. Within the YouTube ecosystem, there are a “finite amount of ad dollars.” So, when an event like the coronavirus causes the website to have a massive surge in viewers, “you see this finite amount of ads spread even thinner which results in all creators sharing that thinner slice of the pie.”

“Travel companies made up around 10-15% of all advertising dollars in Q1 and with what looks like a permanent freeze of ad spending there & other major companies pausing advertising budgets (for example Coke) - this would result in a significant decrease in Q2 CPM. Across the board, most creators have seen a 50-60% decrease in CPM which definitely hurts, but this is also paired with significantly less monetized playbacks or how many times viewers watch ads on your channel.”

With this being a very volatile time in the world right now, all we can do is wait and see how everything will play out for both YouTubers and businesses. While businesses will also be experiencing massive revenue losses, YouTubers are often just a single person, and that can have a profound effect on morale the likes of which a company could never feel.