Marketing technology company Pixability has released the results of its 'Beauty on YouTube 2015' study, analysing 1.78m beauty videos with a total of more than 45.3bn views.
Beauty on the video sharing site has evolved significantly in the past 12 months. Overall, beauty videos experienced a 50% growth rate in views from January 2014 to April 2015, with 55% of views now occuring on mobile devices. Branded content is growing faster than other beauty views with a 35% boost in the number of views annually.
The list of most popular vloggers is also changing, with Michelle Phan overtaken by up and coming beauty stars twice in the past year in the number of monthly views. Bethany Mota and Zoe Sugg surpassed Phan's monthly views at different points earlier this year and can now both boast a higher number of subscribers. However, with almost 1.2bn lifetime views, Phan is still the most-viewed beauty vlogger on YouTube.
Elsewhere, niche categories grew significantly with videos on beauty solutions for consumers over the age of 45 growing 62% faster than the rest of the beauty category. Cross-over content, such as beauty and comedy, gathered 530% more views per video than beauty only content. Men's grooming is still a small category on the site, accounting for just 4.4% of beauty subscriptions, with the most popular of these clips about hair styling. But this is one area Pixability highlighted as having potential for significant growth, with the number of views on niche subjects growing disproportionately compared to the amount of available content.
Pixability used patent-pending software to automatically collect a list of channels filtering for beauty-related tags. Beauty brands will pay particular attention to these results when considering their own online content. Andrea Barton, Global Social Community Manager at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, said: "The beauty space on YouTube is massive and constantly evolving, and having a solid understanding of our audience and the influential beauty creator community is critical to our digital strategy."
