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YouTubers make jump to TV in pursuit of advertising dollars

The Columbian
Published: February 25, 2015, 12:00am

Stephanie Horbaczewski’s company, StyleHaul, manages 5,000 YouTube stars who dazzle 60 million viewers a month with watch–and-learn videos such as “2 Ways to Get Princess Jasmine’s Hair.” The YouTube videos, sponsored by the likes of L’Oreal and Banana Republic, delve into fashion, beauty and the lives of women younger than 35. They generate income for both the stars and StyleHaul. The Los Angeles-based company doesn’t release financial information but claims revenue has tripled in the past year.

Now StyleHaul’s top personalities are seeking more than just online stardom. StyleHaul and several companies like it are helping their video bloggers leap to roles on television and movies. The bigger screens come with prestige, millions of new viewers and larger paychecks.

StyleHaul recently signed a deal with the Oxygen cable network, TV production firms Trium Entertainment and Lentos Brand to create a reality series featuring StyleHaul stars, tentatively titled “Survival of the Clickiest.” Horbaczewski said she hopes the increased credibility, visibility and financial stability that television offers on-air personalities flows StyleHaul’s way, too.

“How do we create something to excite our existing audience while bringing over a new audience?” she said.

Though online advertising spending is growing, television remains supreme. Some entertainment industry analysts predict that TV shows will become indistinguishable from the Web videos. That future might not be imminent, but the Oxygen deal is among a growing list of experiments laying the foundation for widespread crossover between YouTube and traditional Hollywood.

Cameron Dallas, known for his funny clips on the six-second-video-sharing app Vine, starred in the movie “Expelled” last year. After a limited run in theaters, it sat on the iTunes Top 10. Online comedian Grace Helbig debuts a prime-time talk show on E! in April. BET has ordered a pilot based on a YouTube series about young black women called “Twenties.” YouTube prankster Jack Vale wrapped up a behind-the-scenes series Tuesday for HLN.

The Web stars “view TV as the ultimate graduation,” Amy Powell, president of Paramount Television, said.

For StyleHaul and its ilk, TV advertising dollars are a major draw. Online video ads are expected to hit near $8 billion this year, according to Emarketer, but TV advertising will be $71 billion in the same time period. And television’s continuing appeal to female viewers older than 35 provides a potential new audience for StyleHaul.

“Figuring out what they want to watch is what we’re after,” Horbaczewski said.

StyleHaul is set to unveil additional shows at this spring’s NewFronts, a gathering of advertisers and digital media companies.

Despite her enthusiasm for TV, Horbaczewski , a former marketing director at retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, said she wasn’t thinking in that direction when Trium approached her last year about co-producing a show.

“Whoa, that’s scary. I’m not putting my creators in that situation,” she recalled thinking. Horror stories about the cutthroat TV industry gave her the chills, she said. But she said she realized that the mothers who watch television must be curious about why their children spend hours watching YouTube. To give moms a taste, a show about online stars juggling the demands of everyday life seemed like an “amazing” idea, she said.

Oxygen’s decision whether to air the show will hinge on the reaction of network executives to the first episode. But the show’s expected celebration of millennial entrepreneurs fits with the channel’s recent push to cater to “young, multicultural women.”

StyleHaul’s TV aspirations already received a big boost when the company was bought in November by RTL Group, one of Europe’s largest TV and radio broadcast companies, in a deal that valued the 4-year-old startup at close to $200 million. RTL’s empire includes FremantleMedia, the studio known for “The X Factor.”

Horbaczewski, 36, had the idea for StyleHaul after reading a Fast Company magazine article in 2010 about actor-producer Ashton Kutcher talking about the nascent rise of “branded short-form content”: 25-minute-or-less videos that incorporate advertising. She spent two months identifying YouTubers whose videos about wardrobe and makeup tips had the most views. She told them that their collective effort would generate stacks of data for increasing viewership and suggested making adjustments on things such as video titles.

StyleHaul also would introduce branded content, so the YouTube stars would have another way to make money in addition to the TV-style advertisements that display before or during videos. Advertisers highly value sponsored videos because viewers treat it as a product recommendation from a friend, which tends to spur more sales than an impersonal product placement. Such StyleHaul marketing campaigns spread across seven social networks, including Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram.

The transition from social-media apps to television won’t be one that every YouTuber can pull off, industry experts say. But StyleHaul leaders are betting on their stars’ versatility and dreams to attract viewers anywhere.

“It’s a great time to be in the online world,” StyleHaul’s Chief Content Officer Mia Goldwyn said. “We’re in a unique position to optimize a YouTube strategy, a digital strategy and now a television strategy.”

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