EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Thermal Imaging => Topic started by: EEVblog on December 23, 2019, 07:48:44 am
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If you see some reviews of a thermal camera that looks like this soon you'll know most likely the reviewer was paid $2k.
They are looking for 10 "influencers"
I and other content creators get these kinds of emails almost daily.
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Pretty sure that says $20k, Dave. Might want to take that post down and sell out :P
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Pretty sure that says $20k, Dave. Might want to take that post down and sell out :P
If you follow the link you get 10 influencers for the $20k budget. Don't know if it's a fixed $2k each, or on a view pro-rata basis. I suspect the latter. They are targeting 1M views.
EDIT: A double check shows a budget of "$20k / influencer". So I presume if you can hit the 1M views (1.06M actually) then you might get the $20k.
This is why they want to pay you after the video release, so they can see how many views.
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Reply with a counter-offer. They will send the device to review for free, you will review it in a video and get to say whatever you want. Quote them $5k for this and $15k more if it reaches 1 million views.
Why is this not a win-win?
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Reply with a counter-offer. They will send the device to review for free, you will review it in a video and get to say whatever you want. Quote them $5k for this and $15k more if it reaches 1 million views.
Why is this not a win-win?
a) It doesn't work like that. They must review the video first and approve it. You can't just "say whatever you want".
b) I haven't accepted money for a review in the 10+ year history of this channel, and I'm not about to sell out now.
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hey Dave, thanks for the heads and and for stopping by in this part of the forum(for a non administrative matter).
We have had promo offerings and advertisements by some of new Chinese players here already. I am surprised they plan to push the QVGA+ model so much. The images look great at first but are horribly sharpened. Some said the T3Pro is similar to the Hti301 but lenses differ. They are worth a proper comparison but not a paid advertisement.
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Thanks for sharing this news Dave.
It is an interesting situation as I consider people should be paid for their labours, but I do not believe it is right to influence independent reviews.
I would be fine with a reviewer being asked to look at a product and paid an agreed amount for their time BUT, and it is a BIG BUT, I would expect the reviewer to have total editorial control of the released review with NO influence from the product manufacturer or supplier. The review should be transparent and state that the reviewers time was compensated with a payment or the agreed donation of the equipment reviewed. The reviewer must be able to deliver a fair and balanced review that will not influence payment. There should be a right of reply by the manufacturer in the review to permit corrections or explanations to be seen by the reader. That is how reviews should be made, not Fake news or carefully edited in an attempt to ‘polish a turd’
I dream of a perfect World where internet influencers would not be vulnerable to being influenced by financial incentives. Dave is right to resist such approaches unless he decides that a particular review may be sponsored yet remain satisfactorily transparent to all. I trust Dave to be very honest in his reviews.
I remember I was approached by a well known UK equipment supplier who asked if I wanted to review some of their equipment offerings and post reviews on their web site as part of their advertising. I replied that I would be happy to do so provided my reviews were unedited and I was paid for my time. I never heard from them again !
I do not donate my precious time to advertising campaigns that make other people wealthy !
I would personally be happy to produce honest and unbiased reviews of thermal cameras for a company, but I am not a famous influencer and in my case I would want payment or compensation for my time, just like a technology journalist.
Fraser
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Speaking as an old-fashioned print publication tech journalist (commissioning editor, actually) I work in a sector where sponsored influences just don't seem to occur. We're fortunate to have a selection of good reviewers who get loaned a piece of kit to play with, write up what they found, return the kit and then get paid (by my publication) for their work. Occasionally a reviewer likes the kit so much they will buy the review sample, usually at roughly trade price, but this is normally disclosed in the text. I cannot recall any instances where a supplier has tried to exert influence on the reviewer.
That said, I do work in a fairly niche area where there are only a handful of manufacturers and perhaps a dozen dealers in the country (UK). I was present at a product launch a while ago where pretty much all of the country's dealers and journalists gathered. It wasn't a big room, and it was interesting to watch the body language of the top people from the various dealers!
In a world that small and with only about 5 national journals, what I'll refer to as 'purchased compliments' are either endemic or absent. I am pleased to say that as car as I know - and I am quite well-placed - it's absent, at least from the print realm.
I wish I could say the same about the online arena. Whilst I don't for a moment think that the manufacturers or dealers are handing out money like confetti, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a certain amount of murkiness in places, if only (for example) someone from Dealer A posting words of praise for products (and how great Dealer A is) in carefully chosen forums. All anonymous, of course.
Perhaps I am just lucky to be working in an area where paid compliments are rare. As Fraser said, it would be nice if more of the world was trustworthy, honest and independent, but I suspect where there's money to be made someone, somewhere will always play dirty.
Just showing my ignorance for a moment, if you have 20 influencers each racking up a million views, how much would YouTube be rewarding the content creator/owner? 20 million views, even at 0.1c per view, would go a long way towards funding those influencers...
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They don't mention where "send product to you" fits in. Presumably somewhere around point 4 or 5 of the list.
Could always get the camera, do an honest review, they don't pay you, but you still end up with a free camera. Probably not worth the effort though.
One of their staff seems to post on the forum: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/a-new-smartphone-attached-thermal-imaging-camera-from-xinfrared/ (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/a-new-smartphone-attached-thermal-imaging-camera-from-xinfrared/)
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LTT tried to do it correctly but had a lot of trouble with their community. They main idea was to split editorial from advertisement internally. you cannot buy their opinion, but you could buy them out for a sponsored 'showcase' video that has no judgement and clearly indicates it purpose. There was one of them planned a week.
The initial response was bad and they changed it again after a longer discussion in Livestream and their forum.
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For what it's worth, it gets really nasty when it's the other way around. Back in my younger years I was publishing software I had written myself, and it got quite popular. I of course got the usual offers from the smaller publications ("for xxx dollars we'll post nice things about you"), the largers ones use proxies (usually people close to the publication that have a side business and request you to buy something from them in exchange of, again "nice things written about you").
The worse was the smaller guys posting nasty, fake reviews of my software with negative scores, then emailed me asking for thousands of dollars to have it edited back to a 'good score'.
I kid you not. It was vile and i do not have fond memories of these days because of that kind of behaviour.
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Just showing my ignorance for a moment, if you have 20 influencers each racking up a million views, how much would YouTube be rewarding the content creator/owner? 20 million views, even at 0.1c per view, would go a long way towards funding those influencers...
Youtube CPM is roughly in the $1 to $2 range, so a million view video should get roughly $1k-$2k in adsense revenue. Could be more depending upon the subject and the competing buyers.
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LTT tried to do it correctly but had a lot of trouble with their community. They main idea was to split editorial from advertisement internally. you cannot buy their opinion, but you could buy them out for a sponsored 'showcase' video that has no judgement and clearly indicates it purpose. There was one of them planned a week.
The initial response was bad and they changed it again after a longer discussion in Livestream and their forum.
Umm that is still what they do AFAIK. Many examples recently, some products got the "showcase" with the manufacturer's marketing bullet points, and a separate video with LTT's actual review.