Emotional language within influencer marketing on YouTube: A qualitative case study of twelve videos from Spanish YouTubers

Sanna Pelttari
University of Turku

This case study of twelve videos of Spanish YouTubers explores emotional language within influencer marketing. Special consideration is given to whether hedonic values were prevalent in the emotionally charged evaluations without neglecting the utilitarian values involved. The analysis of this interdisciplinary study reveals that most of the evaluations, the majority of which were directed toward feeling products, were generally positive. Expressions were categorized into different overlapping reasons, reflecting the co-occurrence of both hedonic and utilitarian rational values. Nonetheless, a general correlation can be established between hedonic values and feeling products, and between utilitarian values and thinking products. Furthermore, the YouTubers consistently employed the same linguistic and lexical patterns throughout the observed data, giving the impression of a rather spontaneous way of speaking in these videos. The videos were characterized by a certain amateurism on a discursive level, but with some features of professionalization particularly in the case of thinking products.

Publication history

Date received: 16 November 2023

Date accepted: 13 August 2024

Published online: 18 February 2025

Table of contents

The phenomenon of influencer marketing on social media has revolutionized the marketing and promotion of products. In fact, global influencer marketing market growth has been nothing short of spectacular, reaching an astounding $ 21.1 billion U.S. dollars in 2023, and the market was estimated to reach a record of $ 24 billion in 2024, when, in 2016, it was valued at a mere $ 1.7 billion (Statista 2024). It is noteworthy that YouTube, as a platform for influencer marketing (hereafter IM) campaigns, was ranked fourth in 2022 after Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok (Geyser 2023). Meanwhile, the struggle among influencers to determine who merits users’ attention has become increasingly arduous, yet this is the name of the game in today’s attention economy — within IM (see García-Rapp 2017; Marwick 2013, 2015) and for the marketing personnel of the companies (Brody 2001). In this particular panorama, it is of particular significance to acknowledge that the dichotomy that has long been established between YouTube’s amateur and professional content has become blurred. This phenomenon is attributed to one of the fundamental characteristics of YouTube, which is driven and spurred by the social interactions and participatory culture of its users, who have multiple roles ranging from “ordinary users” to “entrepreneurial vloggers” and everything in between (Burgess and Green 2009; Lange 2009).

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