YouTube is the second-largest social media platform after Facebook, with 2.7 billion users worldwide. In 2024, Google (which owns YouTube) reported that people watched over 35 billion hours of shopping-related videos on the platform. With that many eyes on the platform, it begs the question: how do brands use it to stand out and build brand trust on YouTube? Brands that succeed on YouTube often rely on two powerful forces: repetition and relatability, both of which shape how audiences develop brand trust over time.
Social media platforms, particularly YouTube, have a keen understanding of the psychology of how we build connections and trust. The brands that use YouTube to their advantage aren’t necessarily better, but they are more familiar. YouTube offers an excellent opportunity to build trust through two pillars: repetition and relatability. Both of these aspects have become more relevant and powerful than ever, and as consumers, it’s important to be aware of these tools before you make your next purchase.
Why Brand Trust Matters in Online Shopping
In the age of online shopping and artificial intelligence, trust has become the new currency in fashion and shopping. No longer can we look at an online image of a product and trust it’s real. Even if we’re looking at pictures of models, we can’t even be sure that they’re real models!
If this sounds unbelievable, it’s not: check out my article about AI in advertising, where I discuss the concept of models’ “digital twins.”
With all of that in mind, once a brand earns your trust, that’s worth its weight in gold – for both the consumer and the brand. Let’s say I wanted to buy a new pair of jeans. Because I’ve bought jeans from the Levi’s brand for years, there’s been ample opportunity for trust to grow, so they are usually where I turn first. It takes out a lot of the guesswork for me, and Levi’s also benefits by earning my repeat business.
Empirical research supports the importance of trust: in a 2015 study focused on online shopping, researchers found that trust significantly influenced online shopping behavior. Variables such as web security, availability, and experience factored into this perceived trust. More recent research, published in 2023 and focused on TikTok Shop, found that the same is true among Gen Z.
I stumbled upon a quote from a 2001 study that reviewed the digital marketing landscape. Even though the quote is pretty old, it is arguably even more applicable and relevant today:
Trust may take on a heightened importance in electronic markets because of the spatial and temporal separation between buyers and sellers imposed by the medium.
How Does Repetition Build Brand Trust on YouTube?
The more we see something, the more familiar it feels – whether it’s a positive or negative association. Enough repetition and familiarity can assuage the uncertainty we might feel when coming across a brand. This experience is known as the mere exposure effect, a psychological phenomenon in which we develop a preference for something simply because we’ve been repeatedly exposed to it. (It’s also known as the familiarity principle.)
YouTube presents an excellent opportunity for the mere exposure effect to occur. We as viewers may see the same brand across multiple videos – whether that’s through a sponsored video suggestion, an influencer talking about the item, or an advertisement. Even if we aren’t consciously aware of the brand’s presence each time, its repeated exposure makes it feel more recognizable and trustworthy.
Previous research on the mere exposure effect in marketing supports this idea. An Indonesian-based investigation in 2023 found that the mere exposure effect positively and significantly influenced purchase intentions for Barbie products from the 2023 Barbie film (come on, Barbie!). Further, familiarity between consumers and sellers can foster a sense of safety and ease when purchasing on social commerce platforms, according to a 2023 research study. This research, along with another from 2003, also concluded that perceived familiarity allows customers to gather more complete information about the seller, thereby alleviating consumer anxiety.
YouTube’s algorithm can help push repetition in a way that feels more natural. When someone watches certain types of videos, for example, product reviews or “get ready with me” videos, the algorithm will recommend similar videos from the same brand or creator. This means, as a viewer, you may see the same brand across different creators’ channels, increasing the likelihood that it will feel familiar whenever you decide to make a purchase. In this way, YouTube gradually transforms unfamiliar brands into familiar ones, building trust along the way.
How Does Relatability Build Trust on YouTube?
If repetition makes a brand feel familiar, relatability makes it feel more human. On YouTube, brands and creators build relatability by being transparent and showing themselves as ordinary, rather than as out-of-touch celebrities. As a viewer myself, I find the most connection when a brand takes me “behind the scenes,” showing how things are done and why. The casualness and friendliness of these videos blur the line between entertainment and relationship-building.
Speaking of relationship-building, YouTube offers a particularly ripe environment for the parasocial effect to flourish. The parasocial effect describes the phenomenon of people forming one-sided connections with people they watch on their screens, despite never meeting them. Parasocial relationships occur because our brains process these intimate experiences similarly to face-to-face experiences, leading people to react to those on their screens as they would to real people. Over time, and as familiarity with the influencer or brand grows, recommendations carry more weight, and a viewer may start to trust their judgment in the same way they would trust a friend’s.
For brands, this dynamic is valuable and powerful for building brand trust. When products appear naturally in a video, whether it’s a vlog, a tutorial, or “behind the scenes,” it feels more like a personal endorsement than an ad. When you combine this sense of relatability with YouTube’s repetition-driven algorithm, it can make viewers much more receptive to brands and products than they might otherwise be.
Why YouTube’s Long-Form Format Changes the Game
You may have gotten to this point in the article and thought, “Well, don’t other platforms like Instagram and TikTok have relatability- and repetition-oriented algorithms, too?”
The answer is yes, although YouTube remains unique for its ability to host long-form content and its series-based viewing.
By allowing for long-form videos, it creates more opportunities for creators to create powerful stories and build relationships with their viewers. By contrast, on Instagram and TikTok, videos can be up to 60 minutes long; on Facebook, a video can be up to 241 minutes. While you can upload longer-format videos to these platforms, that’s not what viewers expect.
(For the record, YouTube’s max video length is 12 hours or 256 GB, but only if you have a verified account.)
Another characteristic that sets YouTube apart from competitors is how creators can structure their content into ongoing series. Channels often structure their videos around recurring formats, whether that’s weekly vlogs, monthly reviews, or themed challenges. This means it’s easier for viewers to watch the other installments of said series rather than scrolling onto something completely different, as you’d do on the other platforms.
When viewers can follow creators and brands across multiple videos, it strengthens their familiarity. Over time, that repeated interaction builds a sense of continuity that shorter, more isolated clips on other platforms struggle to replicate.
Speaking to Business of Fashion last month, Timothy Grindle, co-founder and chief executive of a Colorado-based indie menswear boutique called Canoe Club, described how he uploaded a YouTube video of himself and his chief operating officer answering frequently asked questions in 2020. Because of the overwhelming reaction to that video, the brand now posts as many as 11 videos per month. Speaking about his success on the platform, he remarked, “At first, it was nothing specific other than people liked it. There was a community building around it. Then we just started to see, ‘Hey, if we post a video where we do a talk-through of everything that got delivered from Lemaire, we start seeing some Lemaire sales.'”
What to Be Mindful of as a Consumer on YouTube
So far, I’ve discussed how brands can use relatability and repetition to build trust on YouTube. Still, I want to pause for a second and consider what this means for you, the consumer, and the most important variable in all of this.
We are bombarded with advertisements all day, every day, and some estimates put the number as high as 4,000-10,000 ads. It gets exhausting, mentally and emotionally. So it’s understandable that we place importance on brands we trust; after all, this trust removes much of the guesswork and effort of researching which brand to buy from.
In the same way that we might only consciously be aware of between 78 and 98.5 of the thousands of ads we see each day, we might not consciously be aware of the way that the YouTube algorithm shapes our perspective on brands and products.
Ask Yourself These Questions Before Trusting a Brand on YouTube
- Would I buy this if a stranger recommended it?
- Is this trust based on evidence or emotional proximity?
- Am I rewarding repetition instead of research?
In this fast-paced era, platforms have made it easier than ever to make purchases, thereby reducing the time it takes to do so. Impulsivity and thoughtless spending thrive in environments like this, which is why it’s so important to take a moment to reflect.
When Familiarity and Recurrence Impersonate Credibility
While YouTube dominates the streaming world with its huge audience, its success stems from how it encourages familiarity and connection. With repetition, viewers become more familiar with brands that they see often. Through relatability, viewers get to know products in a way that feels authentic and personal.
The online marketplace is tremendously saturated, and consumers can’t physically interact with products. In this way, recurrence and familiarity strengthen brand trust while also making it easier for the consumer to know where she can turn when the time comes to buy. Understanding how these dynamics work can help us as customers become more mindful of how platforms like YouTube shape our purchasing decisions, while also helping brands recognize the responsibility that comes with earning our trust.
After all, having frequent exposure to a brand doesn’t automatically mean it’s better, and having a relatable marketing strategy doesn’t automatically equal product quality. The brands we trust on YouTube may not be the best, only the ones we’ve come to know best.
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