• Donald Trump won the election with the help of figures like Joe Rogan.
• Rogan is a podcaster, right? Yes, but he’s also a YouTuber.
• And Rogan is one of many podcasters with large audiences on YouTube. Trump made time for many of these.

Podcasts played a big role in Donald Trump’s re-election This week.

Right?

Or maybe it was Twitter. Or TikTok.

It could be all. People who engage with these mediums and platforms may also have reason to believe they are important.

But if you’re looking at how the internet played a role in elections and you’re not talking about YouTube, you’re doing it wrong.

So once again: YouTube is huge – very big It generated $50 billion in revenue last yearA big part of this comes from advertising. Advertisers spend this money because that’s where their eyeballs are.

And of course, some of those eyeballs consumed a lot of political/election content last year. Pew Research 32% of American adults say they regularly get their news from YouTube; This rate is 33%, higher than any other social media platform except Facebook. Based on my unscientific survey of my YouTube-inhaling teenage sons, I’m confident these numbers are much, much higher for teenagers.

What do people who watch political content watch on YouTube? In some cases, it’s just another version of TV: Fox News reportedly drew 1.1 million concurrent viewers for its election day livestream on YouTube. That was about 10% of the traditional TV audience, but still notable for such a young platform.

Overall, YouTube viewers watched 67 million hours of livestreams per person on Election Day. Flow Charts.

But the most interesting thing about the election was the way the Trump campaign spent the summer embracing YouTube personalities. Starting from people you’ve heard of, like Joe Rogan, to people you’ve never heard of before this year. Men of Nelk.

Wait a minute! I can hear you say. Isn’t Joe Rogan a podcaster?

Definitely. But Rogan, like many other creators/influencers/personalities, creates content that lives on multiple platforms simultaneously. You can listen to their podcasts on Spotify, but you can also listen and watch them on YouTube.

And this happens much more often than you think. Edison Research YouTube, including both regular, free YouTube and YouTube’s paid YouTube Music service. -most popular way for people to listen to (or watch) podcasts.

You can see this in some numbers. Rogan’s interview with Trump in October It garnered a staggering 47 million views (note: don’t try to compare this to a TV rating, as YouTube reportedly counts a “view” as a 30-second view, and someone who watches for a while stops and returns to the same spot. The video later in the day will count as the second view ). with JD Vance this month it’s now over 15 million. But even standard issue Rogan interview It can generate 2 million or more views.

And from former Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly to former reality TV star Theo Von, there’s a universe of conservative podcasts or podcasts that are open to conservative guests who aren’t political but are doing big things on YouTube. Trump visited them all. You can also find snippets of their shows on places like Instagram and TikTok. But as many creators do, they’re focusing their efforts on YouTube.

For starters, you can find a huge audience there. YouTube’s algorithmic discovery mechanism means creators can get in front of audiences who aren’t looking for them.

Podcast audiences, by contrast, grow slowly but tend to stick around when they connect with someone they like, says CEO Chris Balfe. Red Seat InitiativesIt’s a company that helps companies like Carlson, Kelly and Bari Weiss of The Free Press sell ads for their shows.

Additionally, unlike platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, podcast publishers can receive a meaningful share of the advertising revenue generated by YouTube viewers. (There are also liberal/left podcasters/YouTubers like Crooked Media, the company behind Pod Save America. But they aren’t nearly as many as journalists, and they don’t have the same kind of reach as journalists. Taylor Lorenz’s notes.)

So should we call these people podcasters? Or YouTubers?

Yes, Balfe says.

“I think it’s the same thing. We should think of it as a podcast plus a YouTube selection,” he says. “Or the creative economy selection. Top-performing talent succeeds everywhere.”