11-year-old Ukrainian girlʼs YouTube channel becomes sixth in the world in terms of subscribers

The English-language YouTube channel of 11-year-old Ukrainian Diana Kidysiuk, Kids Diana Show, has become the sixth most subscribed channel in the world. The girl has over 135 million subscribers.

This is what The Economist writes about.

Diana is second only to MrBeast, several Bollywood brands, and other childrenʼs shows in terms of YouTube subscribers.

If you add to the main channel Kids Diana Show about 20 more subsidiary pages in different languages, from Arabic to Vietnamese, then Dianaʼs content has more than 10 billion views per month. Few people in the world have such popularity, adds The Economist.

The first video on the Kids Diana Show appeared 10 years ago, when Diana was one year old. There she is sitting in a stroller and trying to eat a leaf, while her mother gently dissuades her. Dianaʼs parents initially started YouTube to share home videos with friends and family. But they soon shifted their focus to a wider audience, making videos of unboxing toys, which the children really liked.

Eventually, filming on YouTube turned into a job for the whole family. In 2018, the Kidisyuks changed the primary language of the videos from Russian to English and left Ukraine — first to Miami, and then to Dubai, where they have lived for the past five years.

The video takes up to four months to produce. The family hires production designers, a crew, writers, and actors to create the video. They built several sets in Dubai that can be transformed into a house, a maze, or a garden. Diana’s brothers, ages 12, 4, and 2, also participate in the video. On weekends, the children film on a rotating schedule to ensure continuity of content.

Dianaʼs parents are reluctant to talk about their finances. But Jeremy Goldman of research firm eMarketer estimates that the Kids Diana Show could earn about $10 million a year from advertising, even after YouTubeʼs 45% tax. There are also direct collaborations with brands — for example, a recent Diana video was sponsored by American toy manufacturer Mattel.

The channelʼs largest audience is in America, and American views are among the most expensive on YouTube. But Diana is also popular in India, with fans in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, and the Middle East. The girlʼs parents also run a Ukrainian-language channel. According to the family, after Russiaʼs full-scale invasion of Ukraine, revenue from Russian-language channels has decreased, although the total number of views has not decreased.

Diana Kidisiuk is a real star among children. And as studies show, children are the most active consumers of online content, notes The Economist. Children under 15, who are called Generation Alpha, spend almost twice as much time on video-sharing platforms as on streaming services.