Brand presence in YouTube beauty content aimed at senior female audience

Abstract

The YouTuber is a digital influencer who presents himself as an ordinary person, with the ability to create opinion thanks to his assessments arouse trust among consumers. Hence its appeal to brands, which seek to integrate their messages with commercial interests, often unidentified as such, among the own-made content posted on YouTubers channels. This study focuses on the presence of brands in the beauty-themed content of channels of YouTubers seniors aimed at the female audience, with the aim of analyzing the presence of products and brands, identifying the advertising character, studying the stylistic and discourse characteristics and reviewing audience and interaction. The three identified variables – presence of products and brands and advertising character, stylistic and speech characteristics and audience and interaction – are studied from 18 indicators in the 196 videos published in 2019 on the two beauty channels of YouTubers seniors with the most followers: MakeUpMasDe40 and Mar Gallardo. The results demonstrate the omnipresence of brands in the discourse of the YouTubers specialized in beauty, especially through the tutorial format and with a multidimensional presence – verbal, visual and in the title – although in most cases analyzed the commercial content notice is not included. The cosmetics of color arouses great interest among the followers of these channels, in which the brands of beauty sector show their products to reach the public known as the viejenials.