What are the celebrity endorsements via YouTube?

The focus of this research will be on celebrity endorsements mostly via ‘’Youtube’’ which is a video-sharing platform featuring a wide variety of user-generated and corporate media content, including music videos, TV clips and other video clips such as video blogs, Let’s Play gaming videos, short original videos, and educational content. ( statistic) High popularity of the youtube led to increasing numbers of new video bloggers and content makers out there, as well as the number of the YouTubers who become a traditional celebrity due to influence in particular area of youtube, talent and number of the subscribers, which itself led to more traditional brands and more contemporary ones start thinking of advertising and marketing there products and services on youtube via famous youtube, as there are going to act as a form of celebrity endorsements. In return for the money and/or other incentives famous YouTubers will make a whole video just about the product or service, recommending it to the subscribers or they can do a more expensive, but also smarter way which is product placement advertisement.

Although many research studies have focused on traditional celebrity endorsements (e.g. TV ads) on consumers purchase intentions, there are very little studies on the social media celebrity endorsements, especially in youtube area. However, this area is highly popular now and should be in the future. This research will attempt to address this gap in the literature by expanding on previous research on celebrity endorsement to investigate the factors that affect consumers’ attitudes and behaviours towards celebrity endorsers on social media, specifically Russian youtube. I am going to focus on Russian youtube because it is quite different from English speaking youtube in terms of celebrity endorsement.