Abstract
We wanted to increase the number of subscriptions to the Max Planck YouTube Channel with the help of influencers. In recent years, we have published a video series called “Max Planck Cinema” to increase students' interest in complex scientific content. The videos generated sometimes well over 100,000 views (aggregated over several years). But these figures fall far short of the number of views of German YouTube influencers in the field of science, whose videos range from several 100,000 views to over a million. Against this background, the Max Planck Society (MPG) in 2020 launched a video series in collaboration with two YouTube influencers. The new “WISSEN WAS” video series focuses on current topics and their underlying scientific facts. Although the “WISSEN WAS” videos have been online for only a relatively short time, it can be seen that the videos produced with the influencers have significantly increased the number of subscriptions. The evaluation also shows that high numbers of views do not necessarily go hand in hand with more subscriptions as other studies have previously assumed. While the basic videos of the Max Planck Cinema series prove to be real long runners, which students regularly (year by year) search for and find on YouTube (Germany) as well as Google (Germany), thereby continuously generating views, it is currently not yet possible to estimate whether the “WISSEN WAS” videos, will still generate as high a number of views per day after several years.
Highlights
The Max Planck Society (MPG) is a publicly funded research organization
If we look at the entire Max Planck YouTube channel, only a quarter of the viewers (26%) are from this age group
The present case study shows that cooperation with YouTube influencers has helped to significantly increase the number of subscribers to the Max Planck Society’s YouTube channel: between January and July 2020, the number of subscribers increased by about 23% from 23,964 to 29,371
Summary
The Max Planck Society (MPG) is a publicly funded research organization. In the so-called “PUSH (Public Understanding of Science and Humanities) Memorandum” (Stifterverband, 1999), the German non-university research organizations, including the MPG, committed themselves to actively and intensively promoting science communication in Germany by establishing new formats and channels and preparing the content professionally and in a target-group-specific manner. Based on 1,000 views, the “WISSEN WAS” videos generate almost eight times as many subscriptions as the videos of the Max Planck Cinema Series (Table 2) We were able to generate a total of 9,637 views through the ads—costs in total: 262.95 euros (see Supplementary Table 3) These figures do not allow a prediction as to whether the “WISSEN WAS” videos will be continually viewed over several years as it is the case for the basic videos from the Max Planck cinema series. Since these videos are closely aligned with the school curriculum, they are regularly viewed. If we look at the entire Max Planck YouTube channel, only a quarter of the viewers (26%) are from this age group
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