This week Smosh, the Web celebrity duo comprised of Millennials Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, hit five million subscribers on YouTube. They’re likely the most famous Web celebrities you’ve never heard of, but to Google, it’s DIY comedians like these that are turning its premium channels into big money.
Smosh’s electronic mob of five million subscribers watches not just what Padilla and Hecox do on YouTube, but what they say and write on Twitter, Tumblr and their website Smosh.com, which has slowly been morphing into the YouTubers’ equivalent of BuzzFeed.
Google has invested more than $400 million into developing premium channels. While there is no data on how much revenue Smosh videos generate for the search giant, companies like Chrysler, AT&T and Lowe’s are paying between $5 million to $10 million to advertise on YouTube premium content.
The duo’s newest channel and part of Google’s premium content package, Shut Up Cartoons is an animated spectacle consistently ranking in the top 10 of YouTube’s premium content channel performance lists, and is competing – and in some weeks even winning – against channels from major corporations like Warner Bros. and Red Bull.
Smosh celebrated this award-worthy achievement of five million subscribers by giving each other wedgies.
