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It's always interesting to note the waves of sponsors flow through youtube/podcasts. Raid, Nordvpn, recently Incogni. I wonder if the ad spend actually pays off
by posnet 2y ago
It's always interesting to note the waves of sponsors flow through youtube/podcasts. Raid, Nordvpn, recently Incogni. I wonder if the ad spend actually pays off for them, or if it's just VC dollars being shoveled into the furnaces.
- aimazon 2y agoIf they’re high margin businesses that can lock in customers it can work out for them. That’s why VPN sponsors do so well: very high margins and the deals they advertise are typically multi-year upfront payments so the signups immediately repay the advertising cost. The worst examples are low-margin businesses that have high churn, e.g: food subscription boxes. Hello Fresh etc have extremely high churn so they’re paying advertisers orders of magnitude more than they make per sale. That’s why they’ve moved from “free trial” offers to things like “free desert for the lifetime of your subscription” to spread the cost of the offer over the lifetime of the subscription (but even that doesn’t make the model profitable). Rule of thumb: when advertising via influencers (YouTube, podcasts etc.) assume you will receive a single payment from each customer before they churn. If the first (and only) payment the customer makes doesn’t cover the advertising cost (and operating costs) it’s a very bad idea. Free trials are the worst option because it’ll go from 1 payment to 0 payments.
- arrowsmith 2y agoIf VPNs have such big margins then why doesn't a competitor undercut them all on price?
- h0l0cube 2y agoBecause it’s mostly brand recognition that lends security products an aura of trustworthiness, and that involved a high ad spend with an advantage towards established brands.
- stevoski 2y agoMany of the brand-name VPNs are owned by the same parent company. They were gobbled up one by one.
- mentalgear 2y agocare to provide which one / details ?
- dngray 2y agoFunnily enough Windscribe did an article on this: - https://kumu.io/Windscribe/vpn-relationships https://kumu.io/Windscribe/vpn-relationships - https://windscribe.com/vpnmap https://windscribe.com/vpnmap The main two that parent poster would be talking about would be "Kape Technologies" and "Ziff Davis VPNs". We also did an article in 2019 https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2019/11/20/the-trouble-with-vpn-and-privacy-review-sites https://www.privacyguides.org/articles/2019/11/20/the-troubl... They do a lot of astro-turfing with "review websites" that aren't actually independent at all.
- Ylpertnodi 2y agoMullvad very rarely (if ever) get mentioned on vpn review sites. So I've used them for the last several years.
- datadrivenangel 2y agoAnd they're doing print advertising!
- kirb 2y agoAny idea why there hasn’t been much if any enforcement from the FTC and co about the sketchy VPN review blogs? Seems like especially Lina Khan’s FTC would be interested to find a way, because giving the impression of an independent review and then adding a little “actually we’re extremely biased” disclaimer somewhere doesn’t seem like it should be acceptable. They might be offshore, but they do plenty of business with US creators.
- aoanevdus 2y agoThere are cheap and even free VPNs. If your ad can convert customers who aren’t going to comparison shop, you don’t need to be offering the lowest price.
- __alexs 2y agoThey do? E.g. PIA is 1/3rd the price of Nord.
- dngray 2y agoPIA is just one of the Kape brands. Nord Security owns the Nord, Surfshark and a bunch of others.
- __alexs 2y agoWhat does that have to do with pricing competition? Clearly VPNs do compete on price, just the low cost brands aren't blowing money on ad spend.
- dngray 2y agoOr maybe just different marketing strategy eg Nord costs more to begin with, and then they use "promo" deals with offer huge discounts resulting in a normal price again.
- franga2000 2y agoFew people decide between "security products" based on price, they do it mainly based on reputation. Buying that reputation through ads is expensive, so you can't go too low in price. Also, there are super low-cost VPNs out there, but they're a separate market segment and we don't usually hear about them because they don't have the money to advertise in large media outlets.
- wkat4242 2y agoSometimes they even screw the influencers out of their income lol: https://www.newsweek.com/honey-coupon-browser-extension-mrbeast-youtube-influencer-2007484 https://www.newsweek.com/honey-coupon-browser-extension-mrbe... Also mentioned in the post's link by the way. But also TikTok was probably a net negative for him as they lured viewers away from YouTube. I never watch MrBeast and I always block ads and sponsors (sponsorblock) anyway so I didn't really notice any of these things. It's really nice not being overwhelmed with comercialism.
- pests 2y agoLegalEagle and Wendover Productions have brought a class action against Honey/Paypal.
- wkat4242 2y agoLol wendover productions, sounds like a spicy movie studio :) Never heard of that but I'm not so deep into YouTube.
- pr337h4m 2y agoPretty decent logistics channel, perhaps a tad too oversimplified imo
- progval 2y agoLegal documents of the class action: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69503243/wendover-productions-llc-v-paypal-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69503243/wendover-produ...
- aimazon 2y agoI can't even begin to understand how they think this will succeed. The defence so many influencers employ when advertisers turn out to be doing shady things is "You can't hold me responsible! It's not my fault, how can I know what my advertisers are doing?" but as soon as an advertiser does something that harms the influencer, it's a problem? Honey's business model has always been obvious to anyone with any understanding of affiliate marketing, their innovation was that they created a browser extension: that's it. Coupon code websites were doing exactly the same thing for decades before, retailmenot being the one we're probably all familiar with from the early 2000s. The claim that these influencers have lost affiliate commissions because Honey's method is true but it's also true that these influencers are losing affiliate commissions to one another. Amazon is the preferred e-commerce platform for affiliate marketing because they are extremely generous with how they attribute: if you click an Amazon affiliate marketing link and then make any purchase in the next 30 days the affiliate will get paid regardless of whether they were advertising the product you bought or not. And guess how Amazon attributes? Last click! If Influencer A includes an affiliate link for "Expensive Camera" and Influencer B includes an affiliate link for "Cheap Toy" and you click on "Expensive Camera" then click on "Cheap Toy" and then buy the expensive camera, Influencer B is getting paid for that purchase expensive camera purchase, despite Influencer A influencing you to buy it. Affiliate marketing is adversarial, it's a fight for attribution at the expense of everyone else. Holding Honey to a different standard isn't going to work for them. Wilful ignorance of how a company operates isn't a defence against being harmed by them, it's embarrassing.
- grecy 2y agoAs a YouTuber it is fascinating to see the waves of "free product" sponsorship emails pushing harder and harder for me to review something, then a few weeks later to see the waves of videos in my niche from everybody saying "This is the greatest x on the market, you NEED to buy one". One product in particular I must have received twenty emails from different marketing agencies trying to give me one for free. It's now pretty popular in my niche, though when reviewed by an actual expert they said it was junk.
- progbits 2y agoI see Brilliant a lot on technical channels I follow and I'm very confused, the "courses" they are selling all seem like highschool level at best, but very advanced technical channels go "I've learned all this from our sponsor Brilliant".
- bombcar 2y agoAdvertising is paying people to lie, and that's becoming more and more apparent. Or what they "learned from our sponsor" is that they're offering courses.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago> that's becoming more and more apparent That's been apparent for the last 300,000 years of human existence. - 2,000 years ago: Google Ads: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/history-advertising-no-142-pompeii-penis/1357977 https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/history-advertising-n... - 5,000 years ago: Google Reviews - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81%E1%B9%A3ir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-n%C4%81... There is little to no history beyond the melt at the tail end of the last ice age 13,000 years ago. Seas have risen by 200 years and we've always lived near water. My head canon: Agriculture didn't just "pop up", there was a history and tradition before that. Humans have never changed. We just have flashier toys now.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bakugo 2y ago> but very advanced technical channels go "I've learned all this from our sponsor Brilliant". Yeah, because they're paid to say that. You don't actually think they use the service themselves, do you?
- progbits 2y agoOf course they are paid to say that, the question is how far are they willing to go. I'm not talking about some shitty clickbait channels but ones like Steve Mould, whom I generally trust not to straight up lie and would only accept sponsors whose product they believe in at least a little bit.
- Krasnol 2y agoDon't know about the margins, but every time I talk with non-IT people on the topic of VPNs, they know about NordVPN. I've heard it being used synonymous to VPN. Seems to work somehow.
- underseacables 2y agoI think the vast majority of ad spending goes into the furnace. Most people block it out, skip it, or ignore it. Unless it's really good, or unique, it is just universal noise now.