‘You vs. YouTube’, Trivial Pursuit Bets On Web Video

The crib notes for this one: YouTube stars + Trivia + Gambling = Gold?

Hasbro is trying to drum up some new players this week as it launches its latest edition of its 30 year-old popular board game Trivial Pursuit —Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It. The You vs. YouTube campaign taps about a dozen of the most recognizable stars on YouTube—some viral wonders and some of the more prolific vloggers. There’s Gary Brolsma (you know him as the ‘Numa Numa’ guy), Michael Buckley (What the Buck?!), Tay Zonday (Chocolate Rain), Matt Rach, WillWoosh, leeparis, and even HDCYT (Charlie Bit My Finger) amongst others.

The interactive flash game on the Trivial Pursuit YouTube channel pits fans against the top YouTube stars by ‘betting’ whether or not the star will know the answers to selected trivia questions. The scoreboard at the top of the page keeps track of the worldwide—yes this is an international campaign—score of the fans versus the YouTubers themselves. The intro videos are distributed across the YouTubers main channels to insure decent reach aside from the paid display ads running on the YouTube homepage.

So far the top view count from the YouTubers for their You vs. YouTube video comes from Italian vlogger willwoosh with 113,041 views (see below).

More than 100 million copies of Trivial Pursuit have been sold, grossing over $1 billion in sales. But with video games and the internet cutting into families’ precious game nights, Hasbro knew it needed to go after a younger demographic through this heavily integrated campaign with YouTube stars.

All of the YouTubers in the videos were paid, in what effectively is their version of a commercial. It’s another example of the increasingly diversified revenue streams that top YouTubers are developing beyond their traditional revenue sharing from the YouTube Partner Program. Several of the top stars are reportedly earning well into the six figures when adding up all of their earnings throughout the year, with a few of them approaching the vaunted $1 million mark.