By Sahil Patel
Next up on YouTube’s ongoing efforts to advertise its top channels and creators: Freddie Wong and the third and final season of his successful web series “Video Game High School.”
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, YouTube will run a multi-platform advertising campaign for the web series. Similar to previous efforts for creators and channels like Rosanna Pansino, Bethany Mota, Vice News, and “Epic Rap Battles of History,” YouTube will place ads everywhere from billboards, bus stops, subways, and subway platforms in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, to relevant websites and video platforms online. (For instance, ads for Vice News, which was part of YouTube’s second wave of advertising, showed up on the New York Times home page.)
While YouTube’s decision to include Wong in its campaigning shouldn’t come as a surprise — the filmmaker has close to 7 million subscribers on YouTube through his RocketJump (formerly FreddieW) channel — “Video Game High School” has the added wrinkle that it will be the first scripted, narrative series to be promoted by YouTube in the way traditional networks (and Netflix) promote TV shows.
And, make no mistake, “Video Game High School” is a TV show. The second season consisted of six, 30-minute episodes.
Created by Freddie Wong and Matt Arnold, the show takes place in an alternate universe where video-gaming is the world’s biggest spectator sport, and gamers are treated like star athletes. Produced by Rocket Jump Studios in partnership with Collective Digital Studio, the series has totaled more than 84 million views across both seasons.
It will certainly be interesting to see if and/or how much YouTube’s campaign helps the show in terms of season three viewership.
Like the first two seasons, season three was also financed, in part, by a large crowdfunding campaign. Wong and the team raised nearly $900,000 on Indiegogo, almost $100,000 more than the amount they raised on Kickstarter for season two.
Per the WSJ report, ads for “Video Game High School” will kick-off next month. The third season is set to debut on October 13.
This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.
