Top YouTuber PewDiePie Boosts Fanbase Growth by 700 % Thanks to Massive Campaign

The controversial YouTuber PewDiePie’s grand campaign to retain his status as having the most popular channel on the platform seems to have borne fruit, after the Swede stepped up his efforts to effectively compete with his rival, the Indian company T-Series, a famed publisher of Bollywood music clips.

In October, PewDiePie’s leadership turned out to be on the chopping block given the increasing rate of growth of T-Series’ subscriber count. Hence, Tubular Labs noticed that T-Series was gaining so much popularity that it would overtake PewDiePie's 67 million subscribers within a week. 

The observation was universally taken as a call to action, with individuals, as well as legal entities vocally backing PewDiePie, aka Felix Kjellberg. The groundswell of support united his fellow YouTubers like Logan Paul and Mr. Beast, making it possible for the social media figure to rack up an even greater amount of subscribers in the last four months of 2018 than in the entirety of 2017.

The efforts were colossal indeed: Mr. Beast, an American YouTuber with 13 million subscribers, purchased radio ads and billboards promoting PewDiePie. Separately, he carried out a 12-hour livestreamed stunt sporting a unique tongue-twister:  he virtually stunned the audience by saying "PewDiePie" as many as 100,000 times. Likewise, YouTuber Logan Paul offered to donate to charity if his followers subscribed to PewDiePie, who started it all off by challenging his rival with a sabre battle in August.

Statistics site SocialBlade found that a whopping 13 million people joined the Swede’s YouTube channel between September and December, with over 6 million subscribing in December alone — notably a 700% acceleration in growth since September. As of today, PewDiePie has earned the favour of 81 million, with T-Series trailing slightly behind, and people increasingly giving him their likes, striving to keep a person, not a commercial entity, as the face of the most popular video hosting website.

While most top YouTubers have previously had  years of massive growth, there is now a greater competition for likes and views, as the public has greater choice with regard to the content that they want to watch, while the amount of time they have on them is finite. With this in mind, YouTubers have woken up to the fact that they have to diversify how they make money: while Alfie Deyes invests in a variety of start-ups, KSI and Logan Paul opt to sell tickets to their boxing matches.