Game Grumps and Crunchyroll

If you've watched GameGrumps on YouTube the past year or two, you're familiar with the Crunchyroll ads that have popped up on their channel from time to time.

If you're unfamiliar with GameGrumps, they are a popular Let's Play channel that started in 2012. Let's Play YouTube channels are videos of people playing video games and commenting over. Some Let's Players are comedians, others can be hardcore game reviewers. The common trend of all Let's Play channels is the ability to quickly create content on a large scale, as 30 minutes of playing video games could easily equate to three 10-minute videos.

Let's Play channels have become huge on YouTube due to the infamous algorithm change YouTube started implementing in 2014. The change essentially put priority on "minutes watched" rather than "number of views" on each video. While this encourages dedicated YouTubers to put out content faster, it was also detrimental to those channels that are built on high quality production because those kinds of videos take so long to make. GameGrumps member Ross did a whole video explaining this on his channel which shows how the change impacted him as an animator, but the logic can be translated to other high-quality content channels. As a result, YouTube quickly became filled with Let's Play channels like the GameGrumps that took advantage of the "minutes watched" algorithm that continues to sustain them today as a popular channel.

So what does this mean for advertisers? With the GameGrumps and other Let's Players posting on YouTube upwards of three times a day, there are many opportunities to strike a deal and get featured to these huge audiences. Ads in Let's Play channels aren't uncommon--it's easy to find a video with a short "This video was sponsored by..." before the content actually starts.

But GameGrumps made these ads differently. Rather than devise a fake story and film a commercial around it, the GameGrumps Crunchyroll ads are self-aware, silly, and completely "on brand" for the Let's Play channel. The ad featured in this post clearly has low production value, but uses that to make a joke. The fake "ghost of anime past" pokes fun at typical GameGrumps humor and utilizes all of the fans' favorite Grumps (aka the GameGrump members) in the ads. The Grumps themselves are self-proclaimed anime lovers, which automatically attracts other viewers who like anime.

This is an example of an ad that isn't a jarring interruption from the channel's typical content. The GameGrumps have fun during the video and frequently draw attention to the fact that the video is an ad. It's a great celebrity endorsement that doesn't make the viewer feel like the YouTubers have sold out. Although the GameGrumps stopped making these Crunchyroll commericals (but who knows if they'll make a return), they were a welcome piece of comedy that the viewers took as just another wacky GameGrumps sketch, not a piece of promotional material.