If we're talking about small ICOs, they're definitely paying influential Youtubers for positive videos about them and are pushing their coins in the media for money as well. However, I don't think that's the case with big projects because companies can become genuinely interested in them, invest money and then do the shilling themselves because of being interested in the growth of the price. I'm sure there's no shilling with Bitcoin or Ethereum, for instance, and I think that other top cryptos by market capitalization truly have people who believe in them.
OHHHHHHHHHHH GAWD
The big projects are worse, CHIA the new HDD coin, has dozens of people on YT talking shit about CHIA, telling people to buy HDD's and mine green, failing to tell them they'll lose their ass, and lose their $$, and destroy the drives.
Just google YT "Chia mining", all are paid XCH from chia-net, and some from WD & Seagate for the YT's
HUGE money, huge projects
...
Well for ETH&BTC it just happens other ways, say BTC you will see shilling for 'cold wallets', aka trezers and other crap; On ETH you see shilling for 'token-shit'; There is not purpose of shilling for BTC as that's what this site does, 100% shilling 24/7 for BTC