YouTube channels Vice News, Zoella and The Slow Mo Guys will soon be familiar to millions more Brits, thanks to mainstream advertising campaigns funded by Google’s online video service.

YouTube is paying to run TV, print and billboard ads in the UK for the three channels, as well as running online ads on its own and other websites.

The campaigns follow the launch of similar ads for prominent YouTube channels in the US earlier in the year, including YouTubers Bethany Mota, Michelle Phan and Rosanna Pansino.

In the UK, Vice News, Zoella and The Slo Mo Guys will feature in 30-second YouTube-branded TV commercials running around primetime shows including X Factor.

YouTube is also paying for billboards, bus and tube station posters across London, as well as digital ads running on its own homepage, and media partners including Glamour, Wired, Sky Sports and The Guardian.

It’s part of YouTube’s wider drive to capitalise on the popularity of its top channels among young people, while boosting awareness of their stars among older people who’ve never heard of them.

“Across the globe people are watching more than six billion hours of video each month, as they go online for everything from beauty and fashion advice, to gaming tips and cool stuff, to news and sports commentary,” said YouTube’s partnerships director Ben McOwen Wilson.

“YouTube stars are not only entertaining us through their quirky videos and updates but building long lasting relationships with their fans.”

The three channels chosen for the company’s first YouTuber-led advertising push in the UK are certainly popular. British fashion and beauty vlogger Zoella has more than 6m subscribers and nearly 265m total views of her main channel, for example.

The Slow Mo Guys, who are also based in the UK, specialise in slow-motion videos, from jumping dogs to bursting six-foot water balloons. Their channel has nearly 4.4m subscribers and nearly 430m total views.

Vice News, meanwhile, has just over 930,000 subscribers and 130m total views for what it pitches as “a news channel created by and for a connected generation”.

It’s part of Vice Media, which recently secured a $500m investment from Silicon Valley firm Technology Crossover Ventures and US cable broadcaster A+E Networks, which valued the company at more than $2.5bn.

Vice is thus least in need of the three of help from YouTube to fund its marketing, although its news channel fits neatly into Google’s wider aims to position its online video service as a thriving, mainstream alternative to traditional TV networks.

For someone like Zoella, TV ads may help her reach a different audience, but not necessarily that much larger – as a comparison between her 6m YouTube subscribers and the 8.7m viewers averaged by last week’s Sunday episode of X Factor shows.

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