Two unlabelled sponsored showcases in a row

[KeppyKep]

Linus and LMG seem really committed to being clear about sponsors and taking great care in their video titles.

The various livestreams and discussions on the WAN show about this make their position clear.

Which is why I'm highly disappointed that the two most recent videos ("How we make a video in one day" and "How did they fit a gaming PC in this") were labelled as regular videos. Both of them are the very definition of sponsor showcases. Linus has said many times that in regular videos the sponsor has nothing to do with the video topic, and if it does, then it's a showcase.

I'm hoping this was just a once-off oversight (even though it's happened twice in a row).

 

Plus sponsor showcases are supposed to be 'extra' content. I'm curious to see how many videos we get this week. Will we get the regular six in addition to these two showcases? Somehow I doubt it.

[jiyeon]

While the red flags were there with the "How we make a video in one day" with the footnotes of being sponsored by Monday and the crude acting about how Monday is amazing and such, I have to agree.

 

I have room temperature IQ and I fully expected to see an informative documentary of some sort but was disappointed to find it was just a 10 minute advertisement.

 

Riley's Roccat Vulcan made a pretty cool cameo though.

[Eumel2]

Tbf a sponsored showcase is them reading of marketing material which they did not in either of the videos

 

But it wasnt really a review either so somwhere in between?

[jiyeon]

8 minutes ago, Eumel2 said:

Tbf a sponsored showcase is them reading of marketing material which they did not

A lot of the statements made in the Monday video can be seen as marketing material, here's a few, since I really don't want to watch a 10 minute advert again.

 

"It's a pretty awesome platform for project planning and tracking... I have my dashboard set up so I have all the tasks we need right when we get there... They actually auto-populate every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday"

0:53

 

"Monday is basically perfect for our needs but they also have a ton of templates"

1:08

 

"I go to Monday.com and click 'done' on 'gather sources', and because of automation I've set it up, that will actually go to Dennis and then he can start screenshotting them and putting them in the timeline. It's one click and it's all done"

2:06

 

It all just reads like all those repetitive Grammarly ads such as "You have to get Grammarly, Grammarly allows you to correct spelling and substitute in synonyms".

While it might not be directly marketing material script, it certainly sounds like it to the point where we aren't watching human-made content made from the heart, but rather for the money.

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

22 minutes ago, sowon said:

I have room temperature IQ

Fahrenheit or Celsius?

[jiyeon]

2 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Fahrenheit or Celsius?

Celsius, always.

[LAwLz]

22 hours ago, KeppyKep said:

Linus and LMG seem really committed to being clear about sponsors and taking great care in their video titles.

I watched that discussion and quite frankly I don't think they were clear about it at all.

To me, which haven't been following LTT that much (and may be misinterpreting things), it seems like LTT started posting "showcases", which is a nicer way of saying it's an ad. Then people started wondering what was happening and Linus just went "oh, you people who are upset are so stupid for not realizing showcase is what we call our ad videos. It is on you for not understanding our titles, which we have never explained before!".

 

I thought it was kind of funny listening to Linus try to rationalize and have some integrity. At first he talked about how it's very easy to differentiate between a review and a showcase because one is opinion based and the other isn't, and how nobody can pay Linus to have an opinion. That the showcases are free of opinions... Then like 2 minutes later he talks about how sometimes the showcases do contain opinions if it's okay with the sponsor. That segment made me question, what is even the difference between a review and showcase? Both contain material provided by the manufacturer (such as review guides), and both can contain opinions. Is the only difference that showcases is sponsored by the manufacturer and reviews are sponsored by someone else?

 

I find the whole thing sketchy as hell. Seems like LTT is trying to make some extra cash by walking a very fine line, and so far it seems like they are not walking it all that well.

I wonder if my mom would be able to tell the difference between a review and a showcase (aka, advertisement). My guess is that she wouldn't, and if she can't then it's not obvious or clear. It's not clear or transparent if you need to be a superfan of LTT, who watch hours upon hours of content just to figure out what is what.

 

Name the videos for what they are instead. Stop with the "showcase" titles and name them for what they are, advertisements. That would be more transparent to the viewers. Have they even said why they name the videos "showcase" anyway?

[Lathlaer]

Both videos had a clear "Sponsored by..." in the very first second and have sponsor info in the description so I'm not really that offended by that.

 

If you want to argue that they didn't put a tag in the title then sure, they didn't but if you want to argue that the content isn't labeled as sponsored then it's obviously false.

[lewdicrous]

My question is, why was the techlinked video uploaded to the LTT channel instead of the techlinked channel? If it was truly a behind the scenes, then surely uploading it in the same channel they're talking about would make more sense.. right?

[slippers_]

2 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

My question is, why was the techlinked video uploaded to the LTT channel instead of the techlinked channel? If it was truly a behind the scenes, then surely uploading it in the same channel they're talking about would make more sense.. right?

it isnt tech news i suppose?

more views on LTT as well  

[Lathlaer]

4 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

My question is, why was the techlinked video uploaded to the LTT channel instead of the techlinked channel? If it was truly a behind the scenes, then surely uploading it in the same channel they're talking about would make more sense.. right?

Not necessarily. TechLinked and TQ have a very limited scope to what kind of videos go there. If they did a behind the scenes how TQ is made, I wouldn't expect it to appear on TQ channel as well.

 

Historically, behind the scenes videos of inner workings of LMG have always landed on LTT channel.

[Arika]

since it hasn't been done yet

 

@LinusTech

 

better than speculating.

[LAwLz]

25 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Both videos had a clear "Sponsored by..." in the very first second and have sponsor info in the description so I'm not really that offended by that.

 

If you want to argue that they didn't put a tag in the title then sure, they didn't but if you want to argue that the content isn't labeled as sponsored then it's obviously false.

A sponsored video and a showcase video are two different things. Just because a video is sponsored doesn't mean it is a showcase. 

 

 

7 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Not necessarily. TechLinked and TQ have a very limited scope to what kind of videos go there. If they did a behind the scenes how TQ is made, I wouldn't expect it to appear on TQ channel as well.

 

Historically, behind the scenes videos of inner workings of LMG have always landed on LTT channel.

Historically behind the scenes videos have been on the LTT channel because historically TechLinked haven't existed. Actually, behind the scenes videos have mostly been exclusive content to Floatplane, not uploaded to YouTube. 

So I don't think you can use "that's how they have done it before" as an argument in this situation. 

It's probably because it was an easy way to fill their release schedule, and it gets more views that way. 

[Lathlaer]

Just now, LAwLz said:

A sponsored video and a showcase video are two different things. Just because a video is sponsored doesn't mean it is a showcase. 

OK but my post was not a response to yours so IDK why you even bring the "it's sponsored but not showcase" debate here.

[lewdicrous]

24 minutes ago, slippers_ said:

it isnt tech news i suppose?

That's what I'm saying, just a 'behind the scenes' vid, they only upload 3 vids a week, so an extra vid for that week wouldn't really be out of place, isn't that what LTT does anyways? Their normal upload schedual + a sponsored showcase or something similar.

24 minutes ago, slippers_ said:

more views on LTT as well

That I would understand; if one of the reqs. for the deal was "x amount of subs/views"

21 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Not necessarily. TechLinked and TQ have a very limited scope to what kind of videos go there. If they did a behind the scenes how TQ is made, I wouldn't expect it to appear on TQ channel as well.

 

Historically, behind the scenes videos of inner workings of LMG have always landed on LTT channel.

That would be out of place, if they want techlinked and techquickie to be their own things, then they'll only post content related to them on their respective channels and not on the main channel.

They're also gonna give techlinked and techquikie their own floatplane channels, so if they ever make another behind the scenes vid, then it would be even more out of place if those where posted on the main channel.

 

Currently leaning towards "they told us to post it there, so that's what we did"

[Lathlaer]

11 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

They're also gonna give techlinked and techquikie their own floatplane channels, so if they ever make another behind the scenes vid, then it would be even more out of place if those where posted on the main channel.

Linus already said that any behind the scenes FP exclusives will appear on LTT channel so tbh there is almost 0 reasons to get TL channel subscription and hardly any reason to get TQ from FP. This should please people who don't like the split and want to invest in only one channel. Going for LTT will give most content as well as all exclusives.

[LAwLz]

31 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

OK but my post was not a response to yours so IDK why you even bring the "it's sponsored but not showcase" debate here.

Wow hold on. No need to be so defensive.

This thread was started by someone concerned about the transparency with showcase videos.

Your response was that it shouldn't matter because the videos contain "sponsored by" messages.

 

My counterpoint was that showcases and sponsored videos are two different things, and that the labeling required to differentiate the two appears to be missing on two occasions. It's easy to tell that the videos are sponsored, but it's not easy to tell if they are showcases or not. That last part is a problem. If we the viewers can't differentiate between what Linus is being paid to say, and what his actual opinion about a product is, it will be very hard to trust him when he appears to be recommending or praising a product.

[Lathlaer]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

Then like 2 minutes later he talks about how sometimes the showcases do contain opinions if it's okay with the sponsor. That segment made me question, what is even the difference between a review and showcase? Both contain material provided by the manufacturer (such as review guides), and both can contain opinions.

I don't remember which segment it was but from your description I would assume that:

 

1. Review is obviously independent, so basically they can and will say anything they want in the video

2. Showcase is just that - presenting a product without opinion. Now, I understand that when he said that it can contain an opinion if the manufacturer is OK with it then that means that he can say something negative about it (like some annoying quirk, or mention steep price for instance) if it's OKeyed. If not, it's not mentioned .

 

Obviously in both instances he can say something positive about the product because well, a review requires it and in the case of showcase it's hard to imagine a manufacturer who objects to him inserting a positive opinion.

 

As for this topic, I made my previous comment because I'm reasonably certain that the OP doesn't really care whether they label a video as sponsored or showcase (because every showcase is a sponsored video so it's a broader and still technically correct term even if not every sponsored video is a showcase) - he just wants the title to reflect what is given in the first second of the video. 

 

I could be wrong ofc.

 

[lewdicrous]

33 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

Linus already said that any behind the scenes FP exclusives will appear on LTT channel so tbh there is almost 0 reasons to get TL channel subscription and hardly any reason to get TQ from FP. This should please people who don't like the split and want to invest in only one channel. Going for LTT will give most content as well as all exclusives.

If that's the case, then what's the point of having techlinked on floatplane..

You can't post technews early cause it's kinda time sensitive and techtalk is just a mini, pre-recorded wan show imo, so if they aren't going to add anything else then I agree that there's no reason to pay for it.

Techquickie, on the other hand, I understand cause it's not really time sensitive, so posting it a week early would be fine.

[Lathlaer]

1 minute ago, lewdicrous said:

If that's the case, then what's the point of having techlinked on floatplane..

What indeed  You get it marginally faster (we talking 1-2 hours maybe) and obviously ad free but it's clear as day that TL isn't an attractive offer as a standalone.

[lewdicrous]

38 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

It's easy to tell that the videos are sponsored, but it's not easy to tell if they are showcases or not. That last part is a problem. If we the viewers can't differentiate between what Linus is being paid to say, and what his actual opinion about a product is, it will be very hard to trust him when he appears to be recommending or praising a product.

This is a very important distinction, cause if we look back at the monday.com vid, someone mentioned in the official thread that they're using a trial version iirc, so it really seems like a showcase disguised as a sponsored video imo.

 

Edit: here's the post I mentioned. (If you wanna skip the wall of text, go down to "edit more info")

 

[lewdicrous]

4 minutes ago, Lathlaer said:

What indeed  You get it marginally faster (we talking 1-2 hours maybe) and obviously ad free but it's clear as day that TL isn't an attractive offer as a standalone.

Yea, getting it early by an hour or two shouldn't be a selling point..

If "without ads" you mean the mid-roll ad before the quick bits then that too isn't a selling point, cause you can easily skip that..

So, unless they have something in mind that we don't know about, then it just looks like a "support your favorite channel" like patreon, but even patreon has enticing perks (from most creators)...

[Lathlaer]

23 hours ago, sowon said:

A lot of the statements made in the Monday video can be seen as marketing material, here's a few, since I really don't want to watch a 10 minute advert again.

 

"It's a pretty awesome platform for project planning and tracking... I have my dashboard set up so I have all the tasks we need right when we get there... They actually auto-populate every Monday, Wednesday, & Friday"

0:53

 

"Monday is basically perfect for our needs but they also have a ton of templates"

1:08

 

"I go to Monday.com and click 'done' on 'gather sources', and because of automation I've set it up, that will actually go to Dennis and then he can start screenshotting them and putting them in the timeline. It's one click and it's all done"

2:06

 

It all just reads like all those repetitive Grammarly ads such as "You have to get Grammarly, Grammarly allows you to correct spelling and substitute in synonyms".

While it might not be directly marketing material script, it certainly sounds like it to the point where we aren't watching human-made content made from the heart, but rather for the money.

While I do agree that the acting here has a bit to be desired, it's not unfeasible to think that this platform actually impressed them and they liked it.

 

Maybe except this 2:06 bit. That is 100% textbook showcase (as in literally showing how it works).

[Giganthrax]

It says "sponsored by" in the videos themselves. What more do you want?

 

You can't expect them to put "sponsored by" into the title of the video itself, because that would make the title sound like crap, which would draw fewer new viewers. It would also have zero benefit aside from appeasing a tiny minority that cares whether a video they're watching is sponsored, yet is somehow blind to the "sponsored by" notification at the start of said video. 

[nox_]

I'm not that in the loop of these things, but the video sponsored by Monday was an ad with some content sprinkled on, in my eyes at least. Looked like product placement in some US tv series where Toyota was driven and all of the characters where in awe of it's features, not sure which series that was.