‘Vlogmas’ Progenitor Ingrid Nilsen Reflects On Beloved YouTube Tradition

It’s beginning to look a lot like ‘vlogmas’ — that time of year when a slew of YouTubers post daily vlogs during the month of December all the way up to Christmas Day.

And in order to commemorate the festive moment — when, ahem, CPM rates also tend to be at their apex —  Refinery29 sat down with the format’s progenitor, Ingrid Nilsen — who claims she coined the term ‘vlogmas’ with some help from followers on her now-defunct vlog channel all the way back in 2011. Though Nilsen stopped participating in vlogmas in 2015, explaining that the concept of daily vlogging had “crossed a personal boundary,” she says that she’s awed at what the phenomenon has become.

“I think that, at my core, I’m somebody that loves to create, and I really love seeing how ideas can become so much bigger than what you intended in really amazing ways,” she told Refinery29, adding that she’d initially conceived vlogmas as a digital advent calendar of sorts. “Different individuals from families from all walks of life show the ways that they experience the holidays — the positive, the negative, the happy, wonderful moments. I think it really gives people a sense of comfort, and I think it’s a beautiful thing.”

This sense of comfort has also become a massive financial opportunity. While a search for ‘Vlogmas 2012’ generates 898,000 search results, ‘Vlogmas 2016’ returns more than 2 million, according to Refinery29. Furthermore, CPM rates — or the amount that marketers pay in order to have their ads served against 1,000 video views — tend to rise over the course of the year, as well as over the course of every quarter, with December seeing the largest groundswell as a result of the holiday shopping season.

If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can check out Nilsen’s first-ever vlogmas video right here: