Thoughts on Influencer Marketing?

All right Sup Forums, trying to start a serious thread for once. (Probably won't get any reply)

Do younger people here (like ~20 y/o) were actually aware that most streamers/youtubers/ecelebs (whatever you want to call them) are just another Marketing tool used by publishers and communication agencies?

~10 years ago that whole thing barely existed. During the early days of YT/Twitch most people talking about games were genuine, sure they could have a bias because they were fan of certain games/companies but money wasn't involved as much as it is today. Influencer Marketing wasn't really a thing.

An average consumer could easily distinguish promotional content from genuine content. Like if a famous sport player was telling you that [sport game X] was great, you'd knew it was a direct sponsorship.

Today, most entertainers are blurring lines between what used to be a hobby (talking about games online) and promoting content for publishers who offer the most money. They are almost always directly linked to Talent/Communication agencies who are in charge of securing deals with PR/Marketing departments of publishers.

Lot of viewers (especially younger people) seems to just be unaware of that and swallow that content as if it was genuine. How do you usually approach the content promoted by internet celebrities?

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Not just YouTubers, streamers too.

I refuse to watch streamers that have sold out.

There was a streamer live that showed he had a Nintendo NX on stream.

It disappoints the fuck out of me, a great pass time for enjoyment and creative interjection has become nothing more than marketing and cancer.

You act like this is new. We've been surrounded by this junk since TVs came out and radio before then. Everything has an agenda may it be marketing or provoking people to do certain things. The internet just made this easier in general.

What you did have during TV/Radio era was just classic sponsorship/marketing. Because when a singer was talking about his favorite brand of clothes, everyone could easily tell that it was advertizing. Yes using famous people to promote products has been a thing since forever.

However you never had people who did an activity as a hobby actively promoting products related to their hobby without giving any hint that they were receiving money for doing so.

Would you have any real life exemple?

I remove myself from content I've deemed to be blatant shilling.

The sad thing is everyone does it.

Because they're a single person, what are the repurcussions? A huge company would be nailed for violating Advertising Standards with blatant paid promotion that is not clearly shown as such.

It's been a problem on youtube, and it's a problem on twitch. It's part of why theres so much shit content.

I've yet to see actually a famous streamer mentioning that they received money in order to stream a particular game (I mean mentioning while streaming or on their channel, not as a testimony 5 years later when they quit the business). Likewise for YouTuber making series of videos about certains games.

Most of them however aren't just single persons as they are part of network/agencies and receive work through these. And it should be these agencies role to verify that advertising standards are enforced (but obviously no one would ever do that).

t. capitalism

A lot of the people who become influencers are two things.

1. Didn't expect to get popular or make money from their content
2.Already super fans of the companies they accept brand deals for.

Getting free review copies, comped tickets to events, and swag is a bit much for them. It influences their opinions too much.

A good example is the channel The Completionist. The guy has always been a big fan of Nintendo, and now he has a huge audience. Nintendo gives him games super early, and even given him interviews with Shiggy, and other Nintendo folks. Since he became a brand ambassador he hasn't had a single harsh word to say about any Nintendo game he has reviewed, even a game that's generally regarded as a turd like Starfox Zero he gave a glowing review. And it's all legally sound, but it's as transparent as air.

I'm right there with you when it comes to younger people and influencers on youtube. Little kids don't know that MatPat and The Completionist are just cute faces for massive marketing machines giving them completely biased views of commercial products. It's deeply concerning, and because of the ubiquitous and worldwide nature of the web it's an incredibly tricky problem to solve.

Glad to see that I'm not the only one thinking that.

The worse thing is that Influencer Marketing is now backfiring toward Publishers as well. It's becoming more and more expensive (the level of exposure you'd get with a $100K budget 5 years ago wouldn't even give you a tenth of that today).

Company I work at has been forced to shift a lot of our traditional marketing money (media buying, events, direct advertising) toward influencer marketing. It put more strains on our P&Ls and forces us to monetize more aggressively in order to make our money back. We also cut spending in other fields such as Customer Support or even development costs.

And that really annoys me because consumers are the one being penalized in the end. If we don't do influencer marketing, our brand does not exist to the eye of many consumers.

ecelebs are cancer, yes

I see it every day on a store level, I run my own game store. Young kids, 6-12 will come in and ask me if I've heard of X Youtube channel, and if I have copies of whatever game is popular to stream this week. The effect of Youtubers/Twitch streamers is a lot bigger than most people realise. They upload hours worth of content beamed right into the cell phones in the pockets of children every day. From what I see, the influencers themselves may not even know how much an effect they're having.

You guys are getting it all wrong.

Video game streams used to be a niche, a hobby, and not many people watched.

Then it got popular, and blew up, became commercialised.

This happens to everything. How do you dipshits not realise this? You understand what capitalism is, right?

If you want things to go back the way it was, then start something completely new the same way streaming lets plays was completely new back in the early days.

>I've yet to see actually a famous streamer mentioning that they received money in order to stream a particular game (I mean mentioning while streaming or on their channel, not as a testimony 5 years later when they quit the business).

gee i wonder why you never see an actor in the middle of a movie or play stop to remind the people watching that they got paid a specific sum of money to do or say what they are.

as a student of communication I have seen all sorts of methods at play if they ever hire me to help with these problems I would be willing to weigh in :^)

there are actually really easy techniques that could be implemented to reduce the cost of influencer marketing and benefit those who actually end up investing in the product too.

>PewDiePie is going to delete his channel
youtube.com/watch?v=6-_4Uoo_7Y4
Shit is surreal.

Pewdiepie is kind of based now, I wonder if he'll actually delete it, it wouldn't surprise me at this point.

I have a feeling youtube will be taking things very seriously if he actually does. Pewdiepie's ad revenue basically allows the site to exist. I imagine he's solely responsible for probably at least 50 jobs at youtube.

>gee i wonder why you never see an actor in the middle of a movie or play stop to remind the people watching that they got paid a specific sum of money to do or say what they are.

But this is assumed by viewers, that's the biggest difference with streamers. Again using someone popular to promote something is a known fact. It doesn't mean that it doesn't work, it's just different way of promoting a product.

When you watch a commercial, you know it's a commercial, it still trigger purchases. When you see obvious product placement in movies, you know it's product placement, it's often extremely clear even if not mentioned directly.

That isn't the case for streamers talking about games. If viewers can blatantly tell that it's marketing, then it means that the stream and his agency went full retards. (Like if some Call of Duty guys suddenly stream an MMORPG he never played before, that's just completely retarded.)

Well we already have people who specialize in that, I mean influencer marketing is just another skill added to Marketing/PR/Community Managers skillsets nowadays.

We do manage to get a fair amount of coverage for free. We also have lot of low-mid tier streamers that just genuinely enjoy our products and talk about them for free (we just give them codes).

We also have a fairly classic influencer program with CID Tracking so influencers can get kickback on sales they generate or user they convert for us that's one of our most efficient tool by far. Our average consumer LTV is around $19, we have CPAs of $2~$3 through some influencers.

The part that worries me is the unregulated and unrestricted direct advertising to children.

>Kid sees someone review/stream a bad game
>Begs parents for game
>Parent checks out the game to see if it's appropriate for their kids
>Parent asks the person at the store if it's a good game.
>Clerk obligated to say yes.
>Game turns out to be trash
>Game was only purchased because of influencer marketing

To me this seems like a false advertising loophole. There are a lot of literally who people on youtube who got copies of Starfox Zero for free and gave it glowing reviews, and I'm sure there are a lot of kids whose parents bought them that game. And I'm sure most of those kids played that game for an hour or two tops.

I love commercialization and capitalism as much as the next guy, but I do think there should be something should be done to protect naive kids from junk purchases.

Holy shit a good thread on Sup Forums

Kripparrian (One of the top HS streamers) often gets paid to promote games and is very clear on this

Eh, complaining about YT is pretty much a staple of anyone there

If you're easily influenced by people you like before getting a product, there's really no saving you, ever.

Marketers are fucking leeches. They'll grab hold of you and sell you anything they can and when you're out of cash they'll throw you away.

You have access to literally hundreds of reviews on release day. Those reviews may be marketed to you as such, or they may just be raw gameplay footage, or even streamers or elts players giving minor insight.

Fact is, if you buy a shit game, it's on you. We have had so many avenues to see a game before we buy it that at this point you'd be a fool to buy anyting day one.

There will always be a fair amount of consumers who are influenced easily and won't dig deeper (that works also in politics...).

Yes you can certainly make your own opinion if you dig a bit "[game name] gameplay no commentary" is usually enough to already start forming an opinion on something. But lot of younger people won't even bother, often they don't even spend their own money. As said. They watch their favourite streamer on their phone, "game X is great" > I want game X > parents purchase game X.

You cannot ask young minors to make an informed purchase decisions when even many adults are unable to do that.

>We have had so many avenues to see a game before we buy it that at this point you'd be a fool to buy anyting day one.

I'm not super certain that applies to the vast majority of people who play games. I'm so immersed in games and games media that buying a game without knowing if it's good or not will seem absurd to me.

But if we pick something I know nothing about, say, power tools I'm probably going to choose which circular saw to buy based on the first couple reviews I find and what the guy at the store recommends.

99% of marketing is done to the casual/average consumer, not the enthusiasts. It's hard to market to them because they already know what they're going to and not going to buy no matter how many ads you throw at them.

This is amplified ten fold for children, who have absolutely no radar for thinly veiled advertising.

I always figured that if my channel took off enough that Atlus/Aksys/XSEED were offering me cool stuff, the people who are fans alongside with me wouldn't mind.

If you're already a fan money wouldn't really factor in

Minors won't know about paid promotion either so it's moot. Even if the streamer or youtuber says "This is a sponsored video" kids won't know what that means.

Its why marketing towards kids is so effective. Wasn't there a lawsuit vs. McDonalds for their blatant pandering towards children? I recall hearing about that.

>>Clerk obligated to say yes.

Know how I know you're full of it?

A good example, DigitalFoundry LITERALLY became the PS4 Pro channel, and they even axed DF Retro. Oh sure, I'm certain a bunch of Brits are clearly making these videos because they want to, and not because THE company that controls the video game industry has deep pockets to reverse the damage their objective videos have caused.

I thought this was redtube for a second.

Im downloading this extension immediatley.

Ebgames/gamestop managers are like the gestapo. If you're caught not selling pre-orders and talking about games off corporate message you'll be out on your ass in no time.

It's DarkTube via Stylish.

There was because of the toys in Happy Meal if I recall, and in some countries they weren't allowed to link toys with food.

As for kids, if they are really young, yes. But I could make the difference between an advert and a genuine feedback when I was around 13~. But streamers weren't there yet. And today a lot of 13~20 year old are unable to tell really.

If you do that as a hobby and all you get is the occasional free game, it doesn't really have much impact. I work with people like that all day and they're the most genuine really. Even if they're something they don't like, they'll mention it.

Obviously they won't make videos to shit on a product for 20 minutes even if it's well deserved, we wouldn't keep a relationship with them otherwise, so they're still some bias to a degree.

Actually he's right to some extent. Publishers also sign contracts with high street retailers so they push their product forward. And a typical way of ensuring that is simply giving a better cut to the retailers than your competitors.

They're a business, if selling my game is going to give them a bigger margin than my competitor's you can be certain that they will advertise it harder. Obviously you're not going to shove a game of a complete different genre to a customer, but still you can heavily influence purchase decisions.

>see streamer using a headset that seems cool and he says it's good
>check it out for myself and see if it's actually good or bad

Comply stupid people buy something based purely on "it seemed cool". I don't mind marketing because it shows me available products, I'm a rational consumer that goes further and researches my options.

Go back to your philosophy 1 class. Capitalism gives you the freedom of choice, if you're stupid enough to make the wrong decision it's your fault.

Everyone suffers from the "marketing doesn't work on me, I'm above that" fallacy. I'm sorry, but advertising works. It works on me, you, and everyone too. Everyone likes to think that it doesn't effect them, and that's why it effects them. You just rationalise it in your own way.

"I'm not buying this because I saw the commercial, I'm buying this because I looked it up and check the reviews, and did a cost benefit analysis against other products. Oh and I also found about it because of an ad"

or

"I'm not trying this new menu item because I saw it on TV, I'm trying it because I just so happened to find myself at the fast food restaurant I last saw on TV, and I MAY AS WELL try the new thing while I'm here"

I'm sorry, user, you're not special. It effects you the same way it effects everyone else. There's a reason why advertising is where all the money comes from.

Blah blah blah.

All I know is that I watch zero (0) Twitch or YouTube fags.

I'm based as fuck, and you niggas need to

GET
ON
MY
LEVEL.

Go home, user. You're drunk.

Its jusr a PR stunt you stupid toddlers