Techpowerup "Advertorial By AMD" Draws Controversy

[eyecantseeover24fps]

http://deliddedtech.com/2017/06/27/techpowerup-advertorial-by-amd-draws-controversy/
 

Quote

The article reads much like a review from an independent journalist, with no disclaimers within the article itself that it comes from AMD or is sponsored by AMD. In fact, the article was posted directly in the “Reviews” section, a place where users should be able to view an honest opinion rather than a sponsored one. The comparison makes a very strong case for AMD’s RX 560, but does so using misleading representation of data.

 

I guess you gotta be careful with where you get your reviews. Sometimes sponsored content is poorly marked and it can be difficult to notice. I'm a big fan of AMD, but I'm not sure if I agree with the way this sponsored article was represented. It shouldn't have been in a reviews section, and it should've been marked more clearly.

[NumLock21]

Everything to them, according to one of their writers is "world leading"...

 

 

[tlink]

on a low resolution its pretty obviously marked. its not that sneaky imo, even the user is named advertorial. the text they used to indicate its an advertisement is just their normal font size in bold.

 

[Notional]

I'm all for journalistic integrity. And I think any and all adverts should be clearly shown as such. But that does seem to be the case here. What exactly is the problem?

[LienusLateTips]

AMD's marketing team is great though

At least the one managing Ryzen:

[rn8686]

Perhaps the article was edited, but it clearly states in the top right corner "Advertorial by AMD". 

[Monte_Carlo]

Not gonna lie.  This does kinda ding TPU's reliability for me.  Usernames vary from person to person, so advertorial didn't stand out any more than say... w1zzard or the plethora of Linus based names we have here.  In fact I didn't notice until someone pointed this out to me.

 

This should be marked clearly and upfront instead of implying it with a "posted by paid shill."  Hell... if you're gonna imply editorial to your paid shilling, at least have the common decency to provide some opinion content.  

 

 

[tlink]

51 minutes ago, Monte_Carlo said:

Not gonna lie.  This does kinda ding TPU's reliability for me.  Usernames vary from person to person, so advertorial didn't stand out any more than say... w1zzard or the plethora of Linus based names we have here.  In fact I didn't notice until someone pointed this out to me.

 

This should be marked clearly and upfront instead of implying it with a "posted by paid shill."  Hell... if you're gonna imply editorial to your paid shilling, at least have the common decency to provide some opinion content.  

 

 

it literally is marked above it, it isn't just the username.

[mr moose]

I think people should be upset by this.  It is clearly written like a review and benchmarking comparison piece while posted in the review section.  Readers would fairly  assume that it is an unbiased review.  Unfortunately when a manufacturer writes their own reviews you can bet your arse they are not unbiased.  This type of article should not be tolerated by any self respecting media outlet or consumer. 

 

This is basically an ad, it should be posted as an ad not an article. 

 

21 minutes ago, huilun02 said:

Time for hate train. Zmeul let it rip

 

People should hate this, not because it is AMD but because  the nature of the article.   I would be equally as pissed with Nvidia or Intel if they did this.

[tom_w141]

Choo Choo all board the hate train, a clearly not hidden AMD ad. HOW DARE THEY BUY ADVERTISING. SCANDALOUS!  

 

This is dumb though. At the price ranges they compete in their GPUs are better anyway.. A 580 beats a 1060 and a 570 beats a 1050Ti. 560 to be honest I've never looked that low but I'd guess its around the 1050 and the 550 loses to the 1030. They are already winning and have the better reviews in the mid range section anyway so why risk the potential backlash of buying a page and writing a fake review?!

 

In terms of credibility and scandal though this more on TPU than AMD. They sold them a page on their site where they could say whatever they wanted about their products... What did TPU expect? Its just business.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

-snip-

Most of the time I just skip straight down to the graphs to get the info I'm looking for, doesn't matter what is stated at the top I'm not looking at it and if it's structured like a review then that's what it is to me until I see otherwise.

 

Edit:

I can tell it's an ad by the lack of detail, but then I have to scroll back to the top and see the "it's an ad statement or w/e" which is just annoying.

[tom_w141]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

This is basically an ad, it should be posted as an ad not an article. 

Before you even start reading it says Advertorial by AMD. Now fuck knows what an advertorial is, I'm guessing it means sponsored editorial but they bought the space fair and square it says its an ad at the top so I don't think this is a big problem. It might fool the unobservant but I think most of us would notice the "ad by AMD" part and if not we can all smell something fishy with a one sided article like this, at least I would.

[Misanthrope]

Sorry but this is shady: A moron in a hurry would confuse it for a legit article.

[HKZeroFive]

Are people seriously not concerned about this? If this was an advertorial by NVIDIA or Intel, I bet those same people would be screaming that it's misleading.

[zMeul]

2 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Time for hate train. Zmeul let it rip

why should I even be surprised by this!?

I've been telling people AMD's PR is a bunch o shitheads, no one believed .. voila 

ever since ReadTeam+ was a thing, people should've raised the flag

[JoostinOnline]

Just now, HKZeroFive said:

Are people seriously not concerned about this? If this was a advertorial by NVIDIA or Intel, I bet those same people would be screaming that it's misleading.

It's hilarious that people say things like this.  I see it constantly on here.  If it was Intel and nobody cared, people would be making the exact same argument but with AMD in Intel's place.  And the same with NVIDIA.

[Misanthrope]

4 minutes ago, HKZeroFive said:

Are people seriously not concerned about this? 

Nope: they're too in love with their Ryzen chips to accept AMD still hasn't delivered Vega and is resorting to this crap. They will also claim that if there's any culpability is entirely on the website even though they know damn well AMD probably sees and approves the add before it launches or fairly early.

[LAwLz]

Linustechtips yet again proving that they are totally OK with companies kicking them in the face. 

Even some users on TPU are saying "they need to do this in order to make money!", the same reason people here use to justify basically anything bad Linus does. 

 

Yeah, it's "clearly" labeled an "advertorial" (which sounds like a made up word to me) since it has a really small text saying advertorial in the top right corner. This is totally not shady or misleading at all...

/Sarcasm

 

I am willing to bet that a lot of reactions here would have been different if it was the i9 the article was about. But since it's AMD this horrible practice needs to be defended. 

 

Fuck TPU for doing this. I used to like that site but this really is a fucked up thing to do and it completely breaks the trust I had for them. 

 

This type of behavior should not be accepted. It is for crying out loud borderline illegal because it harms consumers.

[Nineshadow]

idk why but this popped into my head

[HKZeroFive]

5 minutes ago, JoostinOnline said:

It's hilarious that people say things like this.  I see it constantly on here.  If it was Intel and nobody cared, people would be making the exact same argument but with AMD in Intel's place.  And the same with NVIDIA.

No, the fact that at least half of this thread are using bullshit excuses such as "it's just marketing" to cover their own biases is disgraceful in itself. This is unacceptable, regardless of which company, be it AMD, NVIDIA or Intel.

[david cassar]

The graph itself is also skewed quite a lot to make the 560 seem as it is much much faster than the 1050. Look at the resident evil result,  the gtx 1050 according to the graph gets 63 fps yet it is 'under' the 60 fps boundary.

[JoostinOnline]

Just now, HKZeroFive said:

No, the fact that at least half of this thread are using bullshit excuses such as "it's just marketing" to cover their own biases is disgraceful in itself. This is unacceptable, regardless of which company, be it AMD, NVIDIA or Intel.

I think you're missing my point.  I'm not justifying AMD's actions.  Rationalizations would appear no matter the company, just from different people.  There are fanboys for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA.

 

I don't know enough about marketing techniques (I had to look up what "advertorial" meant) to have any kind of informed opinion on this, but it sounds kind of shady.

[Nineshadow]

To be honest, a lot of companies resort to advertorials to promote their products. While I don't know what to say about the companies' practices, the one thing that I can definitely critique is the journalism. I might be somewhat ok with an advertorial, although I'm not entirely sure, if the journalists were open about it. But that doesn't happen too often.

 

Very recently, I remember thinking just about this topic when The Verge clearly did a video on the new OnePlus 5 prior to its launch, with a tour around their Shenzen offices, interviews and some peaks to the phone itself. The video I'm talking about is:

I think it's clear that The Verge did an advertorial, but it's disguised as a special feature video. That's just not quality journalism. Oh, and need I point out that you can always hear The Verge talking about something not beating the iPhone, and with the OnePlus 5 they just forgot? Come on guys...

 

My point is that in order to stop or make these practices more reasonable, the journalists need to take action. They are the ones promoting the products after all. If they refuse to do advertorials or are open about it and the fact that they're doing an advertorial doesn't skew their opinions, then things will take on a better course by themselves. I think so, at least. I doubt enthusiasts ranting about advertorials on the internet will make a company change their mind.

[HKZeroFive]

1 minute ago, JoostinOnline said:

I think you're missing my point.  I'm not justifying AMD's actions.  Rationalizations would appear no matter the company, just from different people.  There are fanboys for AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA.

 

I don't know enough about marketing techniques (I had to look up what "advertorial" meant) to have any kind of informed opinion on this, but it sounds kind of shady.

No, I understand that the same argument can be used if NVIDIA or Intel did it. Perhaps I should have said it like this: it's hypocritical that people turn a blind eye towards one particular company and then reprimand another for doing the exact same action. Those people are simple-minded because of their biases, plain and simple.

 

In this particular case, half of the people in this thread have attempted to justify this advertorial by AMD because it seems to me that most of this forum has a liking towards AMD no matter what. I can bet you that those same people would be criticising Intel if it was an advertorial for, let's say, an i9-7900X.

[JoostinOnline]

Just now, HKZeroFive said:

No, I understand that the same argument can be used if NVIDIA or Intel did it. Perhaps I should have said it like this: it's hypocritical that people turn a blind eye towards one particular company and then reprimand another for doing the exact same action. Those people are simple-minded because of their biases, plain and simple.

 

In this particular case, half of the people in this thread have attempted to justify this advertorial by AMD because it seems to me that most of this forum has a liking towards AMD no matter what. I can bet you that those same people would be criticising Intel if it was an advertorial for, let's say, an i9-7900X.

Looking back, I realize I misread your statement.

 

Considering I bought some AMD stock back when it fell, I doubt I could look at this whole thing objectively, even if I understood it.