Quarantine creates new opportunities for video makers, according to a Butter Works report

While global stay-at-home orders have been a blow to most companies, they’ve also created opportunities for businesses helping to keep people entertained. So if you’re a YouTube creator hoping to capture some additional eyeballs while everyone’s stuck at home, online video agency Butter Works has released an interactive report outlining the most promising topics for you to focus on.

CEO Paul Greenberg explained that the report is drawn from the ongoing analysis that Butter Works performs to guide companies’ strategies around video production and distribution. (The agency has done work for clients like Apple, Coca-Cola and Netflix.)

In this case, it was looking at which video topics were getting the most views and the most engagement from U.S. audiences — and then comparing the topics that are currently attracting audiences with the actual number of videos posted on YouTube in a given topic.

The ideal topic for a video creator, then, is one where there’s a lot of audience interest but not many videos (yet).

Image Credits: Butter Works

So what did Butter Works find? The report points to the biggest opportunities as cooking (especially budget meals), comedy (celebrity talk shows, skits pranks and parodies), memes (particularly boredom cures and K-pop), games (outdoor-to-indoor and group games) and video games (especially coronavirus-related).

Greenberg added that this analysis is based on two recent weeks of audience behavior, and will be updated regularly.

“Normally we’d look over a three-month time … but [given the current situation], we want to refresh it every two weeks,” he said. “I agree that it’s such a fluid situation right now, it’s changing pretty fast.”

You can see the full report, including recommendations about video length, on the Butter Works website.