Recent Release | 23 May 2022
From opportunity to impact – Assessing the economic, societal, and cultural benefits of YouTube in Belgium
Economic Consulting Team
Oxford Economics
This study assesses YouTube’s contribution to GDP and employment in Belgium, and its broader impact on society and culture.
YouTube enables Belgian content creators to reach a large domestic and international audience. This supports substantial economic value for those who earn income from the platform, for example as they are paid a share of the revenues from advertising placed alongside their videos. A YouTube presence can also help creators earn revenues from other sources, such as product sales, brand partnerships, or live performance engagements.
These revenue sources not only support jobs and income for the creators themselves, but also wider activity in supply chains, and through workers’ spending. In total, our economic modelling suggests that YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed around €39 million to the Belgium economy in 2020 and supported 2,600 full-time equivalent jobs.
In this report we outline our economic analysis, as well as the findings of wider survey research to investigate how YouTube can sustain careers for content creators; support educators and students; and build skills and knowledge amongst users.
Alongside the findings from our economic modelling and surveys, we present a series of case studies to highlight the personal stories of successful Belgium content creators.
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Animated video summary (English)
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About the team
Our Economic Consulting team are world leaders in quantitative economic analysis, working with clients around the globe and across sectors to build models, forecast markets and evaluate interventions using state-of-the art techniques. Lead consultants on this project included:
Margarida Secca Serra
Economist, Economic Impact
+44 (0) 20 3910 8152
Margarida Secca Serra
Economist, Economic Impact
London, United Kingdom
Margarida joined Oxford Economics in 2019 as a graduate in the London office.
She works in the Applied Economics team where she has been involved in a variety of projects, including a literature review on the effectiveness of soft drink taxation on health and revenue objectives, and a literature review on the benefits of digital services in Europe. She has also supported the econometric modelling of future demand for meat in the UK and several reports on the economic, societal, and cultural benefits of YouTube in different countries.
Before joining Oxford Economics, Margarida worked for the Portuguese Agency for Trade and Investment in London. She holds both a BSc and a MSc in Economics from NOVA SBE and while completing her dissertation, she did an internship at the Portuguese Ministry of Economy.
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