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What are we doing when we use the Internet? In Taiwan, most people use social media, such as Facebook, Line, YouTube, Instagram, etc, frequently; under such conditions, users can start to construct their own space in the Internet.
In recent years, the birth of “Internet celebrity” is one of the reasons why the social media communities are heavily used; among them, the video community is the most popular, and YouTube is the most representative of the Taiwanese social video media. YouTube encourages user-generated content (UGC), so viewers may also become video creators. YouTube gives unique creators the opportunity to become a rising star on the Internet (Jerslev, 2016). .
The economy of Internet celebrities is an important phenomenon in the world, a trend that dominates the decision-making direction of the audience; product demand is no longer the only factor affecting purchases. The business opportunities and influences driven by Internet celebrities has made many advertisers willing to cooperate with them to achieve marketing purposes even with the knowledge that Internet celebrity has many uncertainties.
As Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 users gradually trust the authenticity of the network, Internet celebrity marketing has become a new type of marketing model; video creates deep impressions and elevates intimacy making it an excellent vehicle for expressing emotions. In 2016, with the rise of the use of digital media, traditional advertising was surpassed by the portal of social video platform. YouTube became a new marketing platform; it is very approachable, which gives the audience a new feeling. At the same time, the ads recommended by YouTubers give the audience less of a negative feeling.
In existing literature, few studies have focused on advertisers choosing the right YouTuber; therefore, this study aims to gather aggregated expert opinions and define the selection criteria through a Modified Delphi Method, then determine appropriate criterion weighting to use Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for selection of the best YouTuber for an ad campaign. This new model is applied to a beverage company in Taiwan as an example, and is shown to provide a more objective and feasible method to select the best YouTuber for this company’s advertising.