YouTube as a Contemporary C2C Communication Channel for Companies

The rise of social networks coupled with the new consumption habits are the triggers of the appearance of influencers. The connection between influencers and customers and the influence they exert on them through social networks is of great interest to implement an up-to-date marketing communication strategy. Influencers are creating a new way to reach customers through the generation of customer-to-customer communication (C2C), which can be exploited by companies through the sponsorship of some contents. In this sense, the main goal of this research is to analyze if there are differences between sponsored and non-sponsored influencers' videos in terms of engagement and other variables. Data used for this study have been manually collected from three different YouTube channels (from the category How to & Style) using statistics offered by YouTube and behavioral information about the interactions users/social media. The results have interesting implications for the marketing communication strategy.