The YouTube Gap

Alex Thompson at Politico:

The 2020 presidential campaign’s transition to a mostly digital experience, with the nation on lockdown, has spotlighted a long-term progressive deficit on YouTube that some concerned Democrats compare to the right’s command of talk radio. The country’s leading video platform is also one of its largest search engines (after Google) and a key battlefield in campaigns’ fight to reach new voters and earn free media attention.

While Democratic campaigns and groups spend heavily on advertising on YouTube, they lag in organic content, with dozens of conservative and right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro, Mark Dice and Paul Joseph Watson and more official-sounding channels like Prager University cultivating enormous followings not yet matched by equivalents on the left.

That’s what led Biden to a live-streamed “family town hall” last Sunday night with a trio of YouTube family vloggers who have a combined 3.8 million subscribers. The Biden campaign’s renewed efforts amid the pandemic have come with growing pains: The former vice president awkwardly started off by telling them, “You have really great podcasts,” and the vloggers didn’t post videos about the event on their own channels, restricting Biden to his smaller subscriber base of just 21,500. The Biden campaign told POLITICO that "those who participated are amplifying the event on their own channels" but did not respond when asked for examples.

Still, the Biden’s campaign knows YouTube “is an essential platform for us,” one adviser said.

“‘LeftTube’ has two problems: One is volume and the other is content, neither of which it seems close to solving on its own,” said Stefan Smith, the former online engagement director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. If the party doesn’t ensure that organic YouTube content is getting attention “in addition to paid digital [advertising], then we are in trouble.”
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While Facebook has earned more scrutiny for its impact on U.S. politics, American adults report using YouTube more than any other online platform, with 73 percent saying they use it, according to Pew Research Center’s 2018 and 2019 surveys on social media use. It is even more popular with 18 to 29 year olds, with over 90 percent of that cohort saying they use the site — even higher rates than Instagram and Snapchat.

And it’s not just cat videos. Half of YouTube users said the site was “very” or “somewhat” important for helping them understand things happening in the world, according to another Pew survey from 2018, making the site’s potential influence on electoral politics clear.