Jack Decker
YTtalk Mad
Definition of payola: the practice of bribing someone to use their influence or position to promote a particular product or interest.
I have been approached by a number of "managers" of YouTubers who have millions of subscribers and "offered" a "chance" to pay them to have their YouTuber to appear on my game show as a contestant and they will then promote their appearances on my game show to their viewers. Now as I've been a marketing consultant for decades, I can smell payola from a mile away. I then always asked, "Will they tell their viewers I paid them to promote me?" The answer was ALWAYS "Of course not." Now this is bad but what was worse was when one big name YouTuber agreed to appear on my game show. He even personally called me and really laid it on thick. And I STUPIDLY ate it all up. Here I am, a new small YouTuber, and this big time YouTuber is praising my game show in numerous ways. I subscribed to his channel for years and naively bought into the public persona he projected. Then the day I was to record his appearance on my game show, his "manager" called and said that I would have to pay an "appearance fee" for the YouTuber to come on. What? How much? $50,000!!! And get this, he made it out as if this was a steal of a deal. "He normally charges at least double that but because he loves your game show so much, he's willing to give you a discount." I said I didn't have that kind of money just laying about. He said he understood and to call him back when I did have it. I've never called him back. Never will. I even threw away his number so I would never be tempted. And that big time YouTuber who said "I just love your game show" hasn't called me since.
And from talking to other successful YouTubers, this isn't anything new. I won't name names as they were trying to help me "understand" the "YouTube ecosystem". In addition to paying hefty "fees" to do collaborations with more successful YouTuber or to just get a five-second shout-out from them (all without the viewers being told they were paid to do such and thus that IS payola), they talked about other ways "you have to pay to play". One admitted that he was going nowhere until he bought fake subscribers, views, likes, comments, and shares. He even tutored me on how the best click farms work and gave me the name of the one he used. He says his channel is now successful but it wasn't until he bought those fake subscribers that bigger YouTubers started doing collaborations with him. I was just curious so I called that one and the sales rep simply amazed me. He explained how their fake accounts are indistinguishable from real subscribers. All his fake subscribers would have American ISPs from all across the USA, randomly watch my videos between certain normal viewing hours, randomly stop viewing after a while "since no one ever watches to the very end as that's a sure sign of a bot", randomly occasionally give my videos a like, randomly occasionally leave a comment that incorporates my show's name or my name into their comment, and on and on and on. And the price for this "high quality" fake subscriber was $1 per. I want a 1,000 subscribers and that would cost $1,000. And if I put him on a retainer, these fake subscribers would continue to view my videos on a semi-regular basis.
As a marketing consultant, I specialized in barter deals so I called up a marketing colleague who did social media campaigns. I told him all the above and he just started laughing. He then told me what his marketing firm does to "bolster" their clients on social media and says "everyone is doing it". He said he personally knows that every network, movie studio, production company, record label, and talent agency (apparently especially them) does this for all of their properties/talent. That there isn't a single TV show, movie, or song that isn't being artificially inflated on YouTube and all the other social media. He jokingly asked me how could the late night talk shows that are barely surviving in the ratings get huge numbers on YouTube. "Have you even seen the garbage Jimmy Fallon puts out? No one ... no human watches that [another word for poo]. It is all fake so they can say their star is popular on social media." And he said many times he knows the talent doesn't even know this is all going on on their behalf and they actually believe they're as popular as social media says they are. And he said this was done on purpose so to not hurt the talent's ego or risk them spilling the beans while they're drunk, high, or seeking revenge once they've be used up and tossed to the side. He then laughed and told me of a meeting where the network executives were amazed at how popular their TV show was and how the production company said they were too. I asked what was so funny. He said both of them didn't know the other was inflating the TV show's numbers on social media. They thought they were the only ones, knew how much they paid to get a certain amount of popularity on social media, and thought the amount of popularity it was getting beyond that was real. It wasn't. It was the other party in the room who was paying to make it popular. I asked if he told them this. "Hell no! They both were paying us to make that awful show popular on social media." He also chuckled and talked about the movie studios and production companies buying tickets to their own movies on the movie's opening night to inflate their opening weekend numbers to make the movie a hit. "It's all fake, my friend. All of it."
Let me tell you that this has really hurt my morale for doing my YouTube game show. At times now, I wonder if I should even keep releasing videos. :-(
I have been approached by a number of "managers" of YouTubers who have millions of subscribers and "offered" a "chance" to pay them to have their YouTuber to appear on my game show as a contestant and they will then promote their appearances on my game show to their viewers. Now as I've been a marketing consultant for decades, I can smell payola from a mile away. I then always asked, "Will they tell their viewers I paid them to promote me?" The answer was ALWAYS "Of course not." Now this is bad but what was worse was when one big name YouTuber agreed to appear on my game show. He even personally called me and really laid it on thick. And I STUPIDLY ate it all up. Here I am, a new small YouTuber, and this big time YouTuber is praising my game show in numerous ways. I subscribed to his channel for years and naively bought into the public persona he projected. Then the day I was to record his appearance on my game show, his "manager" called and said that I would have to pay an "appearance fee" for the YouTuber to come on. What? How much? $50,000!!! And get this, he made it out as if this was a steal of a deal. "He normally charges at least double that but because he loves your game show so much, he's willing to give you a discount." I said I didn't have that kind of money just laying about. He said he understood and to call him back when I did have it. I've never called him back. Never will. I even threw away his number so I would never be tempted. And that big time YouTuber who said "I just love your game show" hasn't called me since.
And from talking to other successful YouTubers, this isn't anything new. I won't name names as they were trying to help me "understand" the "YouTube ecosystem". In addition to paying hefty "fees" to do collaborations with more successful YouTuber or to just get a five-second shout-out from them (all without the viewers being told they were paid to do such and thus that IS payola), they talked about other ways "you have to pay to play". One admitted that he was going nowhere until he bought fake subscribers, views, likes, comments, and shares. He even tutored me on how the best click farms work and gave me the name of the one he used. He says his channel is now successful but it wasn't until he bought those fake subscribers that bigger YouTubers started doing collaborations with him. I was just curious so I called that one and the sales rep simply amazed me. He explained how their fake accounts are indistinguishable from real subscribers. All his fake subscribers would have American ISPs from all across the USA, randomly watch my videos between certain normal viewing hours, randomly stop viewing after a while "since no one ever watches to the very end as that's a sure sign of a bot", randomly occasionally give my videos a like, randomly occasionally leave a comment that incorporates my show's name or my name into their comment, and on and on and on. And the price for this "high quality" fake subscriber was $1 per. I want a 1,000 subscribers and that would cost $1,000. And if I put him on a retainer, these fake subscribers would continue to view my videos on a semi-regular basis.
As a marketing consultant, I specialized in barter deals so I called up a marketing colleague who did social media campaigns. I told him all the above and he just started laughing. He then told me what his marketing firm does to "bolster" their clients on social media and says "everyone is doing it". He said he personally knows that every network, movie studio, production company, record label, and talent agency (apparently especially them) does this for all of their properties/talent. That there isn't a single TV show, movie, or song that isn't being artificially inflated on YouTube and all the other social media. He jokingly asked me how could the late night talk shows that are barely surviving in the ratings get huge numbers on YouTube. "Have you even seen the garbage Jimmy Fallon puts out? No one ... no human watches that [another word for poo]. It is all fake so they can say their star is popular on social media." And he said many times he knows the talent doesn't even know this is all going on on their behalf and they actually believe they're as popular as social media says they are. And he said this was done on purpose so to not hurt the talent's ego or risk them spilling the beans while they're drunk, high, or seeking revenge once they've be used up and tossed to the side. He then laughed and told me of a meeting where the network executives were amazed at how popular their TV show was and how the production company said they were too. I asked what was so funny. He said both of them didn't know the other was inflating the TV show's numbers on social media. They thought they were the only ones, knew how much they paid to get a certain amount of popularity on social media, and thought the amount of popularity it was getting beyond that was real. It wasn't. It was the other party in the room who was paying to make it popular. I asked if he told them this. "Hell no! They both were paying us to make that awful show popular on social media." He also chuckled and talked about the movie studios and production companies buying tickets to their own movies on the movie's opening night to inflate their opening weekend numbers to make the movie a hit. "It's all fake, my friend. All of it."
Let me tell you that this has really hurt my morale for doing my YouTube game show. At times now, I wonder if I should even keep releasing videos. :-(
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