Being a superfan isn’t new. Now, increasingly, passionate individuals are discovering like-minded cohorts online, resulting in a growing opportunity for brands. Empowered by technology, fandoms are meeting the age-old need for human connection, finding meaning, purpose and community across platforms like YouTube. This is the era of the fandom, and fans want to immerse themselves in what they love more than ever.
Thriving fandoms are opening doors for advertisers to realise results at speed and scale, as fans make deeper, more personal connections with their passions. Finding a natural, credible place within this ecosystem, brands can be part of those connections. Through cultural moments, they can prove their authenticity with large, diverse viewerships that were once difficult to reach.
So how can you tap into existing fandoms throughout Australia, supercharge your brand’s following, and sustain your sales? Taking a deeper look at connecting fandoms with marketing, we explore how brands can foster culture, connection and community.
Passionate Aussie fandoms are on YouTube
YouTube is the number one place for viewers in Australia to go deep with what they love,1 making it a natural place for fandoms to flourish. Thanks to YouTube’s unique depth and breadth of high-quality, creator-made content, fans can find it all. Whether getting a peek into celebrities’ personal lives, keeping up with international sport or watching video game walk-throughs — what was once a niche individual interest is now a mainstream collective movement.
No matter the fandom, one moment can turn into thousands of moments on YouTube
Eventually, these powerful fandoms drive culture. That’s because on YouTube, one momentous occasion on the world stage — think Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album release — sparks thousands of new moments for brands to engage.
When “The Tortured Poets Department” dropped, Swifties took to YouTube to create lyric videos, analyse each track, and post superfan content from their own archives. Passionate fans rallied around the #ForAFortnightChallenge on YouTube Shorts, creating an unprecedented amount of original video content.
Advertisers can tap into receptive fandoms for growth
This has significant implications for advertising on YouTube. We know that Aussies want to see brands advertise alongside the content they’re passionate about. Viewers are 2.5X more likely to choose YouTube when they want to deeply understand a topic, compared to other video based platforms.2
From building long-term brand love to immediate sales, YouTube viewers’ high engagement can help brands drive the outcomes they care about.
Sports and gaming: How consumer behaviour is changing across two key fandoms
What fandom is right for your brand? While interests like sports and gaming may not seem like the most natural fit for every brand, YouTube advertisers are proving that there’s likely a sport or gaming audience for every advertiser.
With broad appeal for a large portion of Australia’s population, sports and gaming both have a wide variety of genres and fans — from Wordle players to Minecraft gamers, and Formula 1 enthusiasts to Simone Biles followers.
New consumer behaviour is emerging as the line between sport, gaming and entertainment blurs. Take soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo. According to Forbes, within four hours of launching his YouTube channel, he shattered records, gaining 5 million subscribers. Fans were eager for the unprecedented view into his personal life that he was now sharing on YouTube — just as many other athletes-turned-celebrities have found too.
In Australia, the sports fandom has been on a winning streak
Here’s why any brand can be a sports advertiser: Perhaps the most enthusiastic fandom, sport is the most common Australian passion, with 87% of Aussies being interested in at least one sport.3 For fans of mainstream Aussie sports to niche international events like surfing and darts, YouTube is a place to find content of all types. For example, across the last 12 months, Australian viewers were just as interested in watching AFL content on YouTube as they were Formula 1.4 Non-televised events can now be followed in intimate detail on YouTube, including content before, during and after the big event.
It’s not just casual sports fans who turn to YouTube, it’s the most passionate fans who lean into the platform’s diverse, high-quality and in-depth content. While 61% of all sports viewers say they are watching content outside the live game,5 fanatics are more inclined to immerse themselves in related content, with 75% of passionate sports fans reporting they watch shoulder content.6
For advertisers, this devotion guarantees an audience immersed in what they love — which is impactful given 63% of passionate sports fans agree that they're more likely to consider a brand that creates or sponsors content they're a fan of.7
How AAMI owned Olympic mornings with YouTube Mastheads
During the 2024 Olympics, Australian insurance provider AAMI reached passionate fans catching up on new content across YouTube connected TV. OMD developed a planning strategy that played into the misaligned Australian time zone, with AAMI’s Athletes in the Making brand campaign using Mastheads each morning to tap into this valuable sports fandom when they were most engaged.
Tied to a global event, the campaign resonated widely with Australians who could relate to the funny mishaps of young aspiring athletes. As a result, August was the highest single month of spontaneous awareness in the last two years, and the highest single month of consideration in the last 18 months.
Australia’s gaming fandom is levelling up in importance
According to WARC, gaming’s popularity in Australia is indisputable, yet this audience is relatively untapped for advertising. 70% of Australians play games on at least one device,8 making gaming just as popular across devices as online shopping or listening to music.9 And YouTube Search trends showed that there was more YouTube search interest for the game “Baldur's Gate” than for the blockbuster movie, “Oppenheimer” in 2023.10 The gaming fandom’s increasing importance reflects a significant opportunity to reach new audiences and boost brand engagement with a dedicated strategy for gaming advertising.
Just like sports fans, gamers of all genres turn to YouTube for its unique breadth and depth of high-quality content — including their favourite Australian-based creators like Lachlan, LoserFruit, and LazarBeam.
Highly-engaged, daily gamers are especially valuable to brands and retailers, spending approximately 2X more than non-gamers across products and services — whether related to gaming or not.11 Plus, according to a survey by Kantar in Australia, gamers who watch YouTube spend 1.7X more in product categories and 2.4X more in service categories than those who don't watch YouTube.12
How Maybelline New York reached the gaming fandom on YouTube
Maybelline New York’s Eyes Up campaigns took to YouTube to resonate with the gaming fandom. Their Cannes-Lion winning Through Their Eyes campaign tackled head-on the harassment that women, non-binary and trans people face in gaming and across the internet.
Later, they developed YouTube content creator partnerships and teamed up with Fortnite to livestream the Maybelline Eyes Up Cup tournament. As a result, paid advertising increased views on Maybelline’s YouTube channel by 313%.13
The power of three for brands: Connections, Culture and Community
To connect with more customers and level up results, it’s time to start tapping into the fandoms gaining momentum on YouTube. According to a survey conducted by Kantar, 60% of viewers in Australia agree that advertising in videos on YouTube makes them more likely to consider the brand or product14 — making YouTube an ideal platform for any brand wanting to reach the fans of any and all fandoms.
Connections
Be where the fans are to make the most of existing attention. Reach audiences that are actively leaning into content that’s aligned to your brand identity with YouTube affinity audiences, and build connections through diverse passion points.
Culture
Position your brand as part of fans’ culture with highly-relevant creator content. Fans are emotionally connected to their favourite creators and the things they love. Thinking CTV-first, Pause Ads on YouTube Select enable you to show up when viewers choose to take a break from watching what they’re passionate about on the big screen, and with YouTube Select lineups you can tap into the most contextually relevant content for your brand.
Community
From fans to creators, YouTube is the destination for fandoms. And for brands, this creates an opportunity to own the influence. By thinking fan-first, you can extend campaign reach by fostering connection, trust and loyalty within their fandom communities.
Now’s your opportunity to change the game and find your place among fandoms across Australia.
