The Influencer Hustle 

I never fall for the products 'influencers' push, that would be stupid. Now I have to go, I need to buy a lava-lamp.

I've probably said this before but I'll say it again. You're a treasure.

Influencers act similar to Meryl in “The Truman Show.” Trying to get us all excited about Mococoa. All natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners.

I've already developed flawless internal adblocks, similar to the old days where I would pick up on cues the ad break was coming and mindlessy reach for the remote and position my finger over the mute button . I swear I can see the microexpressions in an influencer's face that signal they are about to segue to an ad read and I sit my finger ofer the skip 5 seconds button.

I don’t miss everything from the past but I do miss old commercials. In the 90s it was “Hey, here’s a tiny Johnny Cash telling you there’s a taco deal for under a buck.” Now it’s sad sappy piano music while some oil corporation tells you how much they care or some RU-vidr staring directly into the camera and telling you how important Express VPN is.

The true heros are endorsements where the person gets away with openly taking the piss out of what they're selling and getting away with it somehow.

People as advertisements, company social media accounts pretending to be people. What a nightmare

It's been quite a ride. I've been using RU-vid from the very beginning, when you were basically a sellout for making any money at all. I remember avoiding turning on ads on any of my videos until I had a few thousand subscribers because I thought that would actually scare people off and they wouldn't watch my videos, ten years ago. When I started my Patreon, I lost a lot of sleep over how much of a betrayal or entitlement it would be seen as that I ask for money to live if people want me doing this full time. To this day I've never done a sponsorship, and I'm not sure I ever will. Invariably, since they're the ones that approached me, it's a product I don't use. It's insincere. Boy I grew up with a different internet. I remember when the Squarespace, Naturebox and Casper ads became a mainstay on the Rooster Teeth podcast. Now basically every video I watch seems to plug some kind of product. A video about changes being made in a game? Metal wallet. A thoughtful video essay? Online training videos or whatever. I've grown thankful for the people that put some kind of special background or lower third on the screen so that I can at least quickly skip it video the mouseover preview. But then there's entire genres of content that I don't even watch, and they got really creepy while I wasn't paying attention. A lot of beauty and vlogging influencers don't seem to even really make content anymore. It's less like they make a video that contains an ad, and more like they just make ads that feature some of their personality. And people keep watching. Just unmitigated celebrity worship of people that are famous for being famous at this point. I really can't relate to what people want these days, which I guess makes me bad at my job.

Yes, the problem really comes down to fake sincerity. I don't care if a RU-vidr got a sponsor so they can keep making content and have a livable wage. What I care about is them lying about it and pretending they actually enjoy the product when they don't, and that it isn't actually an ad.

not sure if this is the same for anyone else but I feel like influencers are also developing their own "News voice", a lot of them seem to use a similar cadence

I don't see what the problem is. I love watching Shillshare webinars, with my Raycon headphones on, in between bouts of Raid Shadow Legends.

A while back this was called "native advertising," and was used in talk shows and such to blur the line between the content people consumed and the ads people wished to avoid. I think the problem comes in with a lot of these "influencer" types is that they pretend they aren't doing a commercial, and they ride the lines that the FTC and other regulators have drawn to prevent consumers from being deceived. I've seen sponsored videos where they bury the fact that they were paid to use a product, deep into their video description, where barely anyone sees. It's deceptive, but it doesn't HAVE to be.

I don't think I've ever tried a product just because My Favorite Internet Person was paid to tell me I should

I find these little rants/verbal essays from Georg highly entertaining and often quite thought provoking. His liberal sprinkling of dry wit and sarcasm always makes me laugh and I find myself nodding, like and old Tibetan monk to his serious points. A highly under rated and undersubed channel from a very shrewd and interesting Georg. He's even managed to put me off painted toenails - for life. I urge any who haven't seen it to watch his vid where he details the story about his love of railway station toilets and the painted toenail lady.

It's so easy to just hit the right arrow as soon as they start talking about their sponsor lol. I don't care if they wanna do it, I don't care how funny they make it, I'ma skip it though.

Whenever youtubers go into their ad spiel I start tapping that fast toward until it’s over. Most RU-vid personalities I watch wear an entirely different outfit and make the screen completely different when they do the ad read and it almost feels like they’re making it easier for me to skip and identify when the ad is over.

This channel is criminally underrated. Bless you Georg.

I was fascinated by the ads in the late '80s early '90s as a kid in Hungary, because the ads were just fun to watch and most of those were creative. 30+ years later I use adblockers and refuse to watch TV in general because I feel it is brainwashing to expose myself to such things.

My favorite commentary on the influencer phenomenon is a t-shirt with a picture of Charles Manson with a caption of "Influencer".

Love that you tossed angry Joe clips in, that guy would promote roofie filled gummy bears for a check at this point.

RU-vid creators now incorporate their sponsorships into their video-essays, as if it's part of their thesis. The most creative ones will have me thinking, for a good twenty seconds mind you, that it's a component of their content, until of course I realize they're trying to sell me a Curiosity Stream membership or a website from Squarespace.

The advertisers giving the influencers creative control over the ads' actual content is brilliant, though. You get things like Alizee absolutely ripping the piss out of RAID: Shadow Legends and still getting paid for it.

"Just wanna give a big shout out to today's sponsor, Hip Tang!"

17:34 Mr Sunday movies are alright, I mean, they’re sponsored but I feel they’re always pretty open about it, and it doesn’t intrude on the content. Brilliant video as always, Georg!

14:25 FYI they weren't hermit crabs, they were Christmas Island crabs during their migration.

Make Georg angry. You'd like him when he's angry.

I love how this slowly transferred from talking about movies to talking about corporate greed, scams and late stage capitalism.

I saw an influencer gift another influencer a 55 gallon barrel of oil the other day, beyond parody

GEORG: "There are no apps that can skip the ads..." ME: "My Right-Arrow key would disagree. Just click the Right-Arrow key a few times...and...SKIP!"

I wouldn't mind ads if they weren't constantly shoved in your face every 6 seconds. But now it is like a Black Mirror episode with ads being projected onto the inside of your eyelids. Now you just can't get away from it no matter what you do. _This comment sponsored by Netflix and Black Mirror._

"the most important thing in show biz is sincerity - if you can fake that, then you've got it made" - George Burns (I think)

How George got through this entire video without mentioning Hiptang! is one of the great mysteries of the internet

"I'd like to thank my friends at Hiptang for all the Hiptang"

An "influencer" is generally the opposite of a "mentor". Their job is to influence you, not to enable you.

I saw a cop arrest an “influencer” for blocking traffic for a video. I told the cop I appreciate everything he does. And hope he keeps up the good work. These people are walking talking advertisements and just like commercials I completely ignore them.

Cinemassacre is the only YT channel I don't find myself fast-forwarding when they start talking about their sponsor. They do little skits about the product, that for the most part are entertaining. I haven't come across another channel that puts in that much effort

Georg has the best feeling of authenticity

It makes me so happy to skip through an ad break during someone's video

I subbed for your film stuff, but I gotta say, I'm loving these videos.

This is one of the reasons why i respect your channel and red letter media so much :)

I feel like a member of high society watching videos from Georg, despite being a student living in a veritable chicken coop, eating tuna straight out of the tin. Just tells how good the aesthetic is.

I love how Map Men just do an funny advert at the end of their videos. Far more effective.

I suspect youtube pushed a lot of the creators I watch to seek sponsors by demonetizing so many of their videos. I appreciate sponsors who don't care if their ads get shown on 'controversial' content.

The only thing I was missing in this episode was some HipTang.

Internet historian does it just right. He takes the piss and is hilarious. Ultimately I do not mind ads if that means the person I support continues making content.

I don't think anyone is truly thinking that this is about authenticity, it is more about selling a lifestyle, the brand. Thus it is more about perception and how people are perceived, thus it is not surprising in the age of social media basically just about curating profiles.

I work in marketing and your point about it being harder for advertisers now; the rise of influencers directly contradicts this. The majority of social media influencers are “sponsored” by companies which are essentially scams. Big brands aren’t going to partner with Brad or Britney who have 10,000 Instagram followers, because they already have contractual relationships with the film, music and tv studios to have their talent promote their wares. It’s actually in many ways easier for big brands now; you don’t have to spend 12-18 months pitching and concepting a new campaign, market testing it, getting it to air, print and radio - just get a Kardashian to do a sponsored post for a fraction of the cost of a traditional 6 month campaign and get the same reach.

One of my favorite RU-vid channels has recently picked up a sponsorship from Dr. Pepper. I thought it was cool because it wasn’t squarespace, skillshare, or raid.

Tell an influencer that he can pay his bills without selling his soul and watch as he recoils.

The best ones for me are the onea that make it clear 'I'm saying this for money' lol. But transparent youtubers are the ones I gravitate towards, and for the rest, I skip the ad spots.

Although you're absolutely right about how authenticity evaporates when it's used to sell products, and how a lot of the influencer market is fake, I think this scheme will continue longer than it should because it enables brands to advertise to children/minors. Many countries have strict rules governing ads aimed at children, and for good reason! Kids are very impressionable. The sponsored content that alienates adult audiences is not so noticeable or annoying to children. And a lot of companies are extremely interested in fostering brand loyalty in children, but may be barred or at least restricted in the methods and extent they can market themselves to those children. Influencer marketing, as it currently stands, is a pretty handy way around that.

That Defranco guy….I don’t understand why millions of peoples subscribe to him. He just picks like 5 Internet stories, copies/writes a 2 minute synopsis on what’s already been reported, and talks about them and does lots of hand gestures and raises his voice like what he is saying is exciting.

JK Simmons is also the peanut M&M. The best influencer ads are on with Business/Brain Blaze because Simon Whistler makes it absolutely random and hilarious while trying to stay on point. They are the only ads I won’t skip.

I don't really understand the whole concept of "influencers." Are their real followers the kind of people who read fashion magazines and think unboxing videos are exciting?

I just wanted to watch a video about influencers and here I am with multiple tabs open to buy beans

You have techincally influenced me to consider buying another lava lamp but not to the point were my doing so would be considered likely

I hope the so-called 'influencers' bubble implodes on itself! I am sick of the fakeness!

Long long ago I had the ability to start channel hopping and come back to my prog within a second of the adverts finishing. Very pleased with myself I was.

It reminds me a lot of the way radio programs advertise products, I think it can be very successful if the audience buys it as a way to support the program itself.

The early stages of this unravelling I feel is already happening. Sponsorblock is an extension that uses community timestamp submissions to skip sponsorship sections of RU-vid videos. It even shows on the time line which bits of the video are sponsorships or self-promotion etc...

Internet Historian is the only content creator (ugh) whose sponsored segments are worth watching. In fact I'd go so far as to say they are a must watch, and his videos would be incomplete without them.

One side effect of influencers being co-opted by marketers is that they lose their credibility especially if it not disclosed. Even for those that do, that has to plant doubt into the integrity of their "non advertising" content especially if their content is in the same category of products they advertise.

Influencers are a narcissistic plague; they are one of the biggest reasons I have no social media (unless you count RU-vid). I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your commentaries; this one was particularly insightful. Hiptang!

Remember when you could watch RU-vid videos without the content creator going into a three minute commercial, on top of all the commercials that RU-vid sticks in there? As soon as I sense one of these product shilling moments coming on, I just click forward on the video till it's done. I never watch them. They're very intrusive. More intrusive than the regular adds.

Internet historian is the only guy who makes actually entertaining commercials

I'm so glad I found this channel. Always great thought provoking content

Damn even though I have never bought a product like these ,I know them all by heart which is a terrible sign. Raycon,Honey,Raid shadow legends,blue apron, G-fuel, NordVpn, Skillshare,express VPN, I didn't even need to look them up.

what's funny is that online videos have this thing called "the ability to pick what part of the video to watch" and i don't think ad agencies wanna admit exists. Seriously even when the ad was funny (Chris ray gun does some pretty hilarious ones) i still don't buy the product. Because i didn't ask for anything like it. I don't care. The fact that marketing agencies cannot grasp the fact that modern audiences want ads for things they're actually looking for and instead bomb us with shit we have no interest in is probably why the corporate model is likely gonna collapse in the near future and i think influencers are the last dying gasp of that shit.

Norm Macdonald’s mangrate ad is the only authentic sponsorship I’ve ever seen tbh

It makes me less mad when they do it creatively, like Jay Foreman does. Seriously, the ads are almost as entertaining as the videos themselves.

This channel is gold. Thank you, Sir.

"There are no apps that can skip the ads if they're embedded into the script" 🧐🧐🧐 Are you sure about that

I work in marketing. Part of my job is approving influencer spending. I was shown a video for one of our competitors, my coworker wanted to use the influencer in our campaign. THE "INFLUENCER" HAD NO COMMENTS. My boss once asked me if I thought influencers were king when it comes to marketing. She made it seem like my job depended on it, but I told her I don't. Good earned PR is worth 10,000 influencer videos. Marketing is dumb, but it has always been dumb.

Great video. It's an interesting phenomenon. I kind of don't mind when youtubers I follow have ads; I like these people and I want them to be compensated for their work. I can always fast forward and usually do. The advertising industry isn't going away and, as someone who grew up with unbearable TV ads, if this is the worst they can currently do then have at it. In terms of unavoidable time spent absorbing ads things are definitely on the up. I lose 5 minutes a day max but with TV it must have been closer to an hour. I realise it's more insidious now though and probably worse for young people on Instagram. Any thoughts?

Thank you for this nuanced statement and - especially - keeping your authenticity by not participating in the shilling grift, which is sadly so common. aaand absolutely great choice of well placed music!😁

Anyone got a discount code for some integrity?

There are content creators out there who manage to turn sponsorships into enjoyable content close enough to their regular stuff, but they are few and far between. Honest acknowledgement that you need the money, or as some channels do where they blow the sponsorship money specifically on the content and let you know about it, greatly changes my perception of the creator. I'll manually skip ad reads in a lot of videos. The only thing I've ever used some RU-vidr's code for was a VPN, but I needed one of those anyway at the time and just wanted a discount. It's honestly kind of fascinating seeing some channels decide that if they're gonna be stuck with advertisements to help pay bills, they should make it entertaining, while others throw their hands up, take some shitty mobile sponsorship, then read the print word for word.

Shout out to SponsorBlock. It made RU-vid actually enjoyable again by automatically skipping sponsored segments. Also, this is exactly why I love RLM. 10+ years and zero sponsorships, thats how you run a YT channel...

Did you spot Georg being knowingly retro wrt RU-vid's paid-for option? Of course he knows it is now called "RU-vid Premium" - but referred to it by its old name "RU-vid Red". He'll be talking about Marathon bars and Opal Fruits next?!

My life is so much simpler and less stressful since i started unquestioningly carrying out the lava-lamp's commands.

Influences are really like the early days of TV and Radio. The actor, sometimes still in character, steps aside and talks product.

Whenever a game/product is promoted i avoid it at all costs to not only not buy trash but i discovered i don't need any of it.

i'm an influencer... i influence my friends to go out for drinks...

I completely agree! From the very begining I found it really gross when youtubers would start shilling crap like Raid Shadow Legends, Dollar Save Club, Raycon, ect.... I miss the days when RU-vid wasn't about monetizing content but rather people just expressing themselves abd making videos for fun ! I've only got a modest following on my channel, but from the very start I decided if i was to ever make money off of the channel it would never be through wasting my viewers time and intelligence with ads.

Advertising changes with the media and surrounding world, but it's all just the same as it always has been, and always will be.

Great Vid, this could be a series where Part 2 could be about more nicher influencers. Alot of influencer marketing discussions seem too focused on beauty, fashion and lifestyle content creators based in LA or London. But influencers with big followings are worldwide and the sponsorship relations with creators that are making gaming, male fitness, anime, pop culture and video essay content is something you could a great video on.

That'll be the Hiptang!

I think the most successful advertisement I've ever seen is on Hand Tool Rescue. And that's because I'm still not sure if he's actually sponsored by Evapo-Rust, or if he just uses the product so often that he thought it'd be fun to pretend to be sponsored by Evapo-Rust.

If someone made an app that recorded the time accrued during ads and displayed them for you in a list, so you could see which brands wasted your time the most, I would buy it.

Some people are just gullible. I can easily avoid influencers in my dressing gown, watching Frasier while sipping a nice cup of hot tea under the soothing light of my precious lava lamp.

You've got some nerve criticising influencers after taking all that money from Hiptang

As others have said, I do hate the fake sincerity that goes with so many, where you know they never touch the product if they weren’t paid to. Also the adverts are so often just easy talking into camera, so I do appreciate those like Sydney Watson who sometimes go a little further in their effort to produce an entertaining ad for the product they are selling.

I gotta know if Georg genuinely believes that StateFarm sells insurance specifically for farmers or my sense of sarcasm has gone to shit lol

It's not normal. Ads still piss me off, especially when I can't skip it.

Everything is an Ad these days. Honestly it's a disgusting trend that goes on and once someone starts doing it I lose all respect.

Honestly as someone who works in the industry (Marketing) you nailed it. Except I personally think influencer marketing is going to trend towards micro-influencers. We have had a lot of success connecting brands with micro-influencers (5 - 10k followers). These people have much more engaged audiences and are usually willing to work for free, or almost for free, especially compared to the people with a 1 million+ followers. For the budget of getting a story post from a 1 million+ influencer, you can afford to engage many many more micro influencers - often with a higher total follower count. That said I think overall the future of marketing largely lies in content and value marketing. This style of marketing will never go away but providing value to your customers first (around problems related to the problem your product solves) is invaluable.

This feels like it's entirely missing the parasocial aspect of "influencers". In a lot of ways, influencers are just piggybacking off of word of mouth engagement with products. You get something because a coworker or a friend or family member tells you about it and says it's good. Why do you trust Joanne from HR about movies, or your sister about good food? You don't, but they're familiar, and familiarity feels like trust. Having your favorite makeup reviewer hock goods at you only goes bad in the same way that your sister stops being a good person to recommend food when the place she told you about gives you food poisoning.

Thank you for this, it mirrors my daily thoughts. Music marketing is a similar rat race, and a meritocracy it ain't.

I don't know why, but I have this sudden urge to buy a lava lamp...

I can't stand being advertised to. I really appreciate what Patreon and timestamps have done for youtubers. I really appreciate a youtuber clearly marking where an ad begins and ends on their video.