YouTube has cancelled a series with its highest-earning star PewDiePie, following a similar move by Walt Disney, after the Swedish video blogger posted a series of offensive videos containing anti-Semitic remarks.PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, made an estimated $15m in 2016 from broadcasting videos of himself playing video games to 53m subscribers on YouTube.
The 27-year-old was currently in the process of filming the second season of the original YouTube series Scare PewDiePie, for its Red subscription service, which was to be produced by the Disney-owned network, Maker Studios.
“We’ve decided to cancel the release of Scare PewDiePie Season 2 and we’re removing the PewDiePie channel from Google Preferred,” a YouTube spokesperson said.
Google Preferred is the company’s premier advertising network, allowing its top brands to advertise against the most popular content on YouTube.
YouTube’s cancellation of Scare PewDiePie 2 would cost the video blogger millions of dollars, according to sources close to the company.
Mr Kjellberg had also been working on a joint multichannel broadcast venture with Disney’s Maker Studios since 2014, which allowed him to run his own network known as Revelmode, producing apps, videos and branded merchandise.
A spokesperson for Maker Studios said: “Although Felix has created a following by being provocative and irreverent, he clearly went too far in this case and the resulting videos are inappropriate. Maker Studios has made the decision to end our affiliation with him going forward.”
The videos under fire include one posted on YouTube on January 11, featuring two Indian men hired for $5 to hold a banner proclaiming “Death to all Jews”. Another, posted on January 22, featured a man dressed as Jesus Christ who said: “Hitler did absolutely nothing wrong”.
Both videos were taken down by Mr Kjellberg himself, following a Wall Street Journal investigation showing the YouTuber had posted nine anti-Semitic videos in the past six months.
“I was trying to show how crazy the modern world is, specifically some of the services available online,” he said, in a blog post. “I picked something that seemed absurd to me — that people on Fiverr would say anything for 5 dollars . . . I am in no way supporting any kind of hateful attitudes.”
YouTube is trying to straddle the line between honouring its free speech policies, while also taking a hard line against hate speech, following pressure from EU regulators to clamp down against inflammatory content.
The Google-owned video site said it had reviewed Mr Kjellberg’s video featuring the “Death to all Jews” poster, but found it to be satirical, rather than inciting violence.
However, the company has pulled all advertising in the video, deeming it to have “violated advertiser policies”.
Now I haven't seen the videos so I don't have an opinion on them, but $15m in a single year for a YouTube guy is absurd.
I don't get it. There were 2 trending stories in the WSJ about this guy, I've never even heard of him.
Youtube stars make a tonne of money. Google/Youtube actively cultivates them as they drive a lot of traffic and advertising revenue. I've got a friend whose job is that sort of cultivation. Advertisers bundle in both for direct sponsorship (ie partnering up like Disney did with this guy) and for banner/pre-roll/mid-roll-post-roll advertising because it puts their content and advertising (overt or more subtle) in front of hard-to-reach millenial and post-millenial eyeballs. Advertisers really love the programmatic advertising angle (which Google keeps garden-walled so it can make most of the money off it), as they can very clearly track dollar spent on advertising through to viewer dollars spent on advertised products.
For an indication of how much programmatic advertising is valued by advertisers (hence how much money is flowing through it for people like this guy to feast on) - in the non-garden walled areas of programmatic advertising, programmatic advertising inventory systems (eg TubeMogul) take around 25 - 30c of each advertising dollar spend that passes through their system. Compare this to comparable inventory systems for traditional media (TV, newspapers etc), which typically only take 0.05 - 0.15 cents of each advertising dollar.
If you want to get a sense of how powerful programmatic advertising is, check out the demos on TubeMogul's website: https://www.tubemogul.com/watch-a-demo
This guy was one of the top tier guys and $15m isn't much of a surprise (although unclear whether all that $15m actually went to him).
That's depressing--to know that people make so much money off of the stupidest crap (which is basically monetized narcissism for most Youtube stars).
I find it (marginally) less an indictment on civilisation than televised competitive computer gaming with commentators.
I've been a random asshole on the internet for years and years now and haven't made a dime from it and this kid pulls in $15mm. Fuck.
It makes me want to kill myself.
Not worth it
Your time will come ;)
This guy apparently said "hitler did nothing wrong" or some shit which is apparently an intentionally over the top saying on the internet that normal people don't get. This caused Disney to cancel.
What's nuts is this dude has a ton of pretty radical videos, but the hitler comment set them off. Not sure why big brands risk it by advertising on these rogue channels that can put reputations at risk randomly.
And who watches the ads. I'll literally mute my computer and read news on another Tab while it plays. Annoyingly.
I guess he crossed a line there...his explanation actually made sense to me and I guess if he was an artist and not a YouTube vlogger it would've been perceived very differently.
Yeah, I mean apparently it's internet speak and common as a joke, but Disney freaked. Sure the dude will be fine.
Can't fuck with the Jews. They run everything
Funny thing is disney made a nazi cartoon.
Those kind of comments are hard to recover from.
So, he's like a news channel person who draws in traffic for YouTube? I listen to music and maybe watch some previews of upcoming movies, never heard of this person.
I think his central schtick is playing computer games and providing commentary on the experience. There's a lot that likely gets added on to that.
Kids these days like that sort of thing and, by not getting it, we're all proving how old we are.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMqZ2PPOLik</a">No, it's the children who are wrong.
His audience is 10-18 year old boys who love trolling other youtubers. I think he'll be fine.
I'm in HS and literally everyone my page knows this guy. He kinda does retarded videos of him screaming and making weird noises while he plays games. I get its entertaining if you are a bored but I don't get how someone can be subscribed to this. If you ask a guy my age about what he wants to do in the future, it's not surprising a lot of them dream to be like pewdiepie. Smh..
Read an article from some typical Huffington Post/Buzzfeed journalist calling it "the postcolonial era of youtube" and remember thinking to myself, wow, the mustard gas filled trenches in Somme certainly did fulfill a vital role in society.
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