YouTube stars and the glass ceiling

On the surface, becoming a YouTube star seems to be a more level playing field than becoming a star of traditional TV. You don’t need special training, experience, corporate backing, or insider connections to start making your own YouTube content and building a fan base. But when it comes to earning power, female YouTube stars have the same “glass ceiling” problem as their counterparts in traditional TV — and this problem seems to have gotten worse for women over the years. 

In addition to the advertising revenue they get from their YouTube videos, YouTube stars make money through merchandise sales, book deals, touring, product endorsements, and movie/TV deals. In 2015, Forbes magazine began compiling its annual Top 10 list of the world’s highest-paid YouTube stars, whose overall earnings continue to rise every year. The list has always been dominated by males, but the number of females on the list has decreased over the years until there were no females on the list in 2018. (The 2019 list is expected to be out in December.) 

In 2015, there were four women on the list: violinist Lindsey Stirling (who ranked at No. 4, with an estimated pre-tax income of $6 million); beauty guru Michelle Phan (No. 7, $3 million); and comedian Lilly Singh and foodie/baker Rosanna Pansino (tied at No. 8, $2.5 million each). 

In 2016, there were three women on the list: Singh (No. 3, $7.5 million); Pansino (tied at No. 5, $6 million); and comedian/singer Colleen Ballinger, also known as Miranda Sings (tied at No. 9, $5 million). In 2017, Singh was the only female on the list (No. 10, $10.5 million). 

It’s possible that Singh (the only female YouTube star to be on the Forbes list in each of its first three years) might make a comeback on the list in 2019. She signed a deal with NBC to host and executive produce her own late-night talk show, A Little Late With Lilly Singh, which debuts in September in the time slot previously occupied by Last Call With Carson Daly. Singh is the first YouTube star to have a talk-show deal with a U.S. broadcast network. When her show debuts, she will be the only female hosting a late-night talk show on a broadcast network — a road that has been previously tread by Joan Rivers, Cynthia Garrett, and Wanda Sykes.

After Forbes’ 2018 list of the world’s highest-paid YouTube stars was published, Singh tweeted about the gender disparity of no females being on the list: “I'm concerned the digital space is going to repeat the mistakes of ancient industries.” She later followed up the tweet with another, saying: “I tweeted about seeing no women on the YouTubers Forbes list and as a result I received some angry tweets from men. Remind me why YOU are mad again? I’m not playing a ‘gender card.’ I am literally stating facts about results in an article. Let’s do better. I’m not your enemy.”

One of those male critics was PewDiePie (real name: Felix Kjellberg), a controversial Swedish video gamer who has consistently been on the Forbes list of highest-paid YouTube stars. (He was No. 1 on the list in 2015 and 2016, and dropped to No. 6 in 2017. In 2018, he ranked at No. 9, with an estimated income of $15.5 million.) In response to Singh pointing out the gender disparity, PewDiePie made a YouTube video calling her a “crybaby and an idiot.”

Singh, though her publicist, declined to be interviewed for this article. Other prominent female YouTube stars, including those who’ve been ranked on the Forbes list, did not respond to requests for interviews.

Forbes reporter Madeline Berg, who has been compiling Forbes’ annual list of highest-paid YouTube stars since the beginning, has this observation: “Historically, the gender disparity of the highest-paid YouTube stars has not been as bad as it was last year, when the top 10 highest-paid YouTube stars were all men. A lot of this has to do with the fact that half of the list is made up of video gamers — a genre dominated by men.”

The males on the 2018 list range from controversial prankster Logan Paul (No. 10, $14.5 million) to Ryan Kaji (No. 1, $22 million), a Los Angeles-based 8-year-old boy who reviews toys on his channel Ryan ToysReview. Almost all the YouTube stars on the all-male list have YouTube channels that are about video games or extreme comedy, such as pranks and physical stunts. Not only are there no females on the list, but the demographics of the males on the list also show some striking similarities: They are all under the age of 40; they are either white (the majority) or Asian; and they are from the U.S., Canada, or Western Europe.

YouTube, which launched in 2005 and was acquired by Google in 2006, has had one of its biggest growth trends in this category: individuals starting their own YouTube channels to focus on their personalities and personal activities, which is the type of channel that the highest-paid YouTubers have. A 2018 study conducted by Converge (a research journal for new-media technologies) shows that the percentage of YouTube channels in the category of People and Blogs increased dramatically, from 13 percent in 2006 to 73.9 percent in 2016. By contrast, YouTube channels decreased in the categories of Entertainment (13.4 percent in 2006 to 3.8 percent in 2016) and Music (17.7 percent in 2006 to 2.2 percent in 2016). YouTube’s rising numbers of People and Blogs channels indicate how much competition has increased among video bloggers, also known as vloggers, on YouTube.

According to a Google/Nielsen study, YouTube’s overall audience is fairly evenly split along gender lines, with females making up slightly more than 50 percent of the audience. However, males are a slight majority of the heaviest YouTube users — those who are the most likely to respond to ads on YouTube. A YouTube/Comscore study identified “YouTube die-hards” as users who spend the most time binge-watching YouTube videos and taking action after seeing ads on YouTube — these tend to be 18- to 34-year-olds, with males comprising 51 percent and females comprising 49 percent. 

Furthermore, a 2016 study by OpenSlate (a company that does data measurement and analytics of digital video) found that males and females have different interests in the type of YouTube content they prefer to watch. The most popular YouTube videos (51 percent) watched by males are about gaming — including video games, sports, toys, and virtual reality — while the most popular YouTube videos (62 percent) watched by females are about beauty and style, including makeup and fashion. 

But even in the category of beauty and style, a male YouTuber is earning more than female YouTubers. Jeffree Star, who has his own cosmetics company, debuted at No. 5 on the Forbes list in 2018, with an estimated income of $18 million. Former beauty influencer Phan, who was on the Forbes list once (in 2015), quit YouTube in 2017, because she said YouTube no longer interested her. After a two-year hiatus, she returned to YouTube by changing her channel to promote Thematic, an online music marketplace that she co-founded. No other female YouTuber in the beauty/style category has made it on the Forbes list since Phan.

Why are advertisers and other sponsors paying more for young, male-oriented YouTube content? It’s likely that this favoritism is due to the fact that YouTube videos for gaming repeatedly engage users in real time or in a time-urgent manner (compared to videos about beauty and style, which aren’t as time-sensitive), combined with the fact that most “YouTube die-hards” tend to be young males. There's a perception among companies that content made by young males and geared to young males is more likely to attract an audience that will respond to YouTube ads.

YouTube did not respond to requests for comment.

Some of the highest-earning male YouTube stars have reputations for being outrageous and controversial. They might be suspended or removed from YouTube programs or dropped by some sponsors due to offensive content, but they still continue to earn millions. 

This trend may eventually start to change. While plenty of sponsors are sticking with these controversial YouTubers (and paying them well enough to increasingly dominate the Forbes list), family-friendly brands and YouTube algorithms and promotions are moving away from controversial content.

“Brands are now pickier about the types of influencers they become involved with,” says Werner Geyser, founder of Influencer Marketing Hub, a company that matches agencies and sponsoring companies with social-media influencers. “This probably began with PewDiePie’s anti-Semitic videos that sent shivers down the necks of conservative advertisers. But it became even more prominent [in 2018] with Logan Paul’s video where he stood beside a dead person in Japan, zooming in on the corpse. While the edgier brands, targeting rebels (and young males), still sponsor such channels, ‘family-friendly’ brands have moved aside.”

Geyser adds, “YouTube now pushes its more traditional channels over edgy, radical, or risky channels. Their algorithm now appears to favor traditional celebrities over creative amateurs.”

While many of the highest-paid male YouTubers court controversy, few have made the transition into starring in mainstream TV shows and movies. And that’s where female YouTube stars can thrive. According to Forbes’ Berg, “Lilly Singh and Liza Koshy have started to move on from the platform, taking their content to television or film.” 

In addition to her NBC talk show, Singh has had roles in several movies, including Bad Moms and Ice Age: Collision Course. Koshy is currently the host of Nickelodeon’s reboot of the game show Double Dare, and she has a co-starring role in the Netflix comedy film Work It. Lele Pons, another successful female YouTuber, has parlayed her YouTube fame into co-hosting the 2018 Teen Choice Awards (televised in the U.S. on Fox) and becoming a hit recording artist in Latin music.

In the fickle world of YouTube stardom, women might have an advantage by not trying to be part of the “bad boys club” of YouTubers who are currently dominating the Forbes list. Geyser concludes, “YouTube’s current worry about edgy content may see a move toward safer topics, [which are] more likely to feature females.”