YouTube Is Ready to Take on TV-Sized Budgets

Google plots a multipronged strategy - using talent like Rachel Levin - to make its video arm the biggest draw for TV dollars.

- Lauren Johnson

IT ISN’T ALWAYS EASY TO PAIR UP THE SUITS OF THE MARKETING WORLD WITH THOSE FREEWHEELING KIDS that make the buzziest videos in the digisphere. The two sides—and more importantly, their respective brands— must have chemistry. So last July at VidCon, the annual digital video conference held in Anaheim, Calif., YouTube set up a “speed dating” event, hoping to play matchmaker between advertisers and creators. Among the talent mingling with marketers was Rachel Levin, a rising beauty vlogger who immediately hit it off with the people behind the anti-smoking initiative Truth. “She wasn’t originally on our radar,” admits Justin Hooper, group creative director at 72andSunny, the agency handling Truth.

She’ll be on just about everyone’s radar this week at the Digital Content NewFronts in New York where YouTube will pitch Levin and other charismatic stars from its creators’ stable at its Brandcast event. Levin, though still a relative unknown, seems like an easy sell—she’s recently entered rarified YouTube air by passing the 1 billion view mark. What’s more, her YouTube subscribers have shot up from 1.9 million to 7.6 million in the past year, and her videos get watched 3.5 million times per week.

Such numbers are why Truth execs cast her for their “It’s a Trap” campaign after learning that, in her personal life, she had little patience for cigarettes. “She had so much enthusiasm and believed in the brand so much [that it] seemed like a total no-brainer to use her,” Hooper says. The commercial has been viewed 6.5 million times (a big number for a PSA) on YouTube since August.

Levin’s secret to success is “only putting out content that I’m super proud of,” she says. “I know what videos my audience likes to see, and I’ve maintained a good connection with my audience.”