You find priceless photography or filmmaking knowledge in online material. You start digesting it, but together with the precious free information, the author mentions a product or a service, which they obviously try to sell you. Do you feel you have been tricked?
The Average Client's Point of View Today
When you need to know something about a certain area of the photography or filmmaking industry, you go to a search engine and try to find the information you need. Most of it is already there, because someone published it. People get used to that to the point that today, there are complaints from people who are offended that together with the invaluable free knowledge, they got pitched to buy a related product or a service.
Why Has Selling Become More Difficult?
The advancement of transportation and communication meant businesses went beyond the local area trying to sell their goods to a broader market. If you lived 200 years ago, the businesses you'd probably be familiar with would be the local bakery, the dairy farm, the sawyer, the huckleberry picker, and a few others. Nowadays, you are reached not only by local businesses but also by companies that are thousands of miles away. You become so overloaded with information that you tend to pay less attention to the multitude of ads you see. In order to sell their products and services. businesses decided to do something more creative that involves a certain investment: creating goods that are free of charge.
How Is Free Content Produced?
Free content, as the name suggests, does not require a payment for viewing and reading. However, it doesn't come free to the publishers. They have to invest their time and resources to write an informative article or to film a video, cut it, mix it with music, add graphics, and market it through different outlets. Sometimes, these free-of-charge materials are created by enthusiasts who don't seek any financial reward for that. Businesses don't make profit from just free content. They use it in an indirect way to attract potential buyers. That's not anything new. When you go to the farmers market, sometimes, farmers let you taste their production for free in order to buy from them a bigger quantity.
Are You Tricked as a Client?
Depends on the point of view. When the information is informative and marketed properly, it's a win-win situation. People get their free content and in return are advertised products and services. Imagine you are a photographer who does that full-time. Will you write blog posts about all your knowledge for free? Will you create online photography courses for free, including person-to-person education for free? Would you rather teach your clients how to take photographs (free of charge, of course) than asking them to pay you for the service? Imagine you are assisting a photographer who does everything free of charge. Do you think you will receive a salary? If you are an enthusiast who has a day job that's not photography or filmmaking, but enjoys publishing free content without advertising products or services, keep in mind your employer can't do that, because otherwise you won't get paid.
Conclusion
Whether or not free content has ads for products and services, it should be both free and informative without any trickery. If we, as clients, enjoy the published materials free of charge, we should not get turned away from a sales pitch along the way. Remember, free content is created for a mutual benefit, not just for the consumers.
I am not really bothered by advertising in free content. I can decide myself if I want to take a closer look or not, and I also know if I can afford it or not. The advertising part should not distract too much from the content, though.
The truth is that the term "distraction" is quite subjective. Some may be distracted, while others — not. For me, the way to go is to have free and valuable information that reflects the title of the content. The worst thing is to have a clickbait material that doesn't contain what it said in the title, but instead you were heavily pitched to buy stuff.
I dont mind seeing "we use this product" and having a link to it.. But there have been a few posts up here positively reviewing totally random priducts. That's the stuff that would drive me out.
Eg: if there was a post for a review of the new rangerover.. That's too far regardless of how the writer tries to frame it toward photographers.
Making an informative post using products is one thing. Making a post just hyping up a product is another.
I agree that as the article stated the products and services have to be related to the free content. I advise you to go under these articles and put your comment so the writer knows about your observation.
Free content? Only cheese in the trap...
Also expensive.
A very important point to bring up. I think Thomas Heaton once explained it in one of his videos. I think it is totally fair I spend a few seconds listening to some advertisement in return for entertainment or knowledge :)
Exactly. Every time I hear Thomas say, "This video is sponsored by Squarespace..." ...I think to myself, yay, go Thomas! Getting paid to pursue your passion! I'm actually encouraged by the thought that he's getting supported in that way.
Of course it would be sad to find out that anyone whose content and/or imagery I greatly admire was /seretly/ sponsored by, or even working with, Canon, Nikon, Sony, or any large brand. To me, that would ruin 100% of their review / recommendation based content, and badly poison my experience of the rest of their "adventure story" and other types of content.
Being also a reader of Fstoppers I don't find such a thing honestly. When there's a sponsored post, it clearly states it's sponsored. When it's non-sponsored (just like this article here) or we make review of produts we like it's quite normal to put links to the products that can be purchased. I find the reviews fellow writers do quite helpful for my personal purchases.
Fstoppers has improved in this regard. For quite a while, the only admission Fstoppers made that a post was sponsored was a tag buried amongst a list of tags at the very bottom of the article.
See for example the comments, including by the author, at https://fstoppers.com/business/how-impress-image-buyers-stock-photograph...
Dana, you are trying to put words in my mouth that I've never spoken.
Prasing a product that's good (whether the article is paid by a company or not) is nothing wrong. If that's the truth, it's the truth regardless of being sponsored or not. If a product has bad sides, and the article states it, this doesn't mean it is not sponsored either.
If the reviewer is honest and doesn't compromise their dignity, the information in an article will be true whether or not a company paid for that.
Probably less than 5% (my subjective estimate) of the articles here are because a company wanted us to review their product. If you see someone writing jealously about Canon, but despising Nikons in 99% of the time it's a writer who likes Canon. Then you see another article by someone who praises Sony. That bias is because of our subjective brand preferences. I find this good, because no brand is the best brand, but it's good to have opinions on many of them. In addition, the comments section sometimes is 50% of the article, because readers help extending the information even further with their opinions on the matter.
If that's what you mean by "informercial," I find nothing wrong about such content especially if it expresses the very truth or is an honest point of view.
I agree that aggressive and sometimes irrelevant advertising can turn people away. This is why I mentioned that sentence in the article:
"When the information is informative and __marketed properly__, it's a win-win situation."
But from your comment I realize that I could probably write more about that to make sure that I don't agree with any type of advertising (as you thought I was fine wtih).
Not sure if putting "sponsored" along the tags is enough to satisfy the FTC. Disclosure has to be clear and prominent. That's of course a matter for the courts to decide.
Exactly Dana.
I noticed a lot of content is made to look like a review but is a sponsored content or an ad. if I even feel for a second they are I just close the window and Im out.
It depends on how it's written. If it's made like an ad and it doesn't give you any useful information (in regards to the title of the content), it's clearly not well-made.
if its related to a retailer I close. if its a high traffic blogger or website, I never click. tons of click bait today, im very hesitant and very aware on what I click. the info given doesnt out way me clicking because its clickbait or a sponsored ad or it just seems like a review though its obvious the person got money to review it. if I sense its an ad or something related to money at the end of this, I close it. and when a reviewer is biased I never visit his site again
Unfortunately that's true for many media outlets today. Many people are eager to make profit the quick way regardless of how it looks or if it's ethical.
I have no issues when it is stated in the video, article or in a group setting that it's sponsored/ad content. What annoys the heck out of me is the photographers that mask their affiliate links, and promotional/ad content behind the guise that they are helping people, when all they really are doing is reiterating old content/education to line their pockets. Trickery is a dick move, and I know a few photographers that do it that are semi-big named. Peer to peer selling in this field is insane,esp affiliate links to big ticket items, and really makes me wonder at what point are you more of a Youtuber/Educator/P2P affiliate junkie than an actual photographer.
That doesn't sound good indeed, but let's say you're a newbie and that's the first page you happen to visit you feel like it's your helping source free of charge. I think such authors rely on the fact they are visited by newbies or people who don't know a specific kind of information. In this regards I don't think that's necessarily bad. It's just nothing new, but yet free useful content.
I would semi agree, but I also feel it's preying on the ignorance of those that do not know the difference between an f-stop and a doorstop.
Let's say a certain popular YT photographer produced a video on a lens that is now known to malfunction, produce horrid CA or what have you, and chooses to keep said video up because of his reach, that it's trended in the #1 spot for said lens review, and still brings in funds from affiliate links/views.
Sure, one could say that user should look for many reviews of that lens, but in your own words if it's the first page to visit they think it's helping. I've seen it quite a bit, and no retractions on reviews.
Same goes for recycling information and bloated videos with very little helpful content, but the popularity and guise of being a 'good' photographer are what pull people in. Because newbies see views/subscribers/followers as a merit of being good, when professional photographers know that's not always the case. So, those newbies won't know if bad advice is given until after the fact.
There are plenty of photographers out there that do this. That put that they are an ambassador of a brand when they're not, that post their affiliate links to big ticket items for their masses because they know a few will buy the item. All the while they produce the same recycled content.
Sorry, going off on a tangent... I digress
If people were just honest that would be amazing, but a lot of people scheme and prey on people for money, esp in this industry where everyone and their mother has a YT, preset packs, and educational resources.
Yes, that is the reality. If people are not honest whatever they do would lead people astray. Internet celebrities can be very misleading indeed, especially if dihonest and only envisioning people as browsing wallets.
Showing people how to use your product and then offering it for sale is basically a marketing video. They do not bother me as much as general advertising, though they are often deceptive about their goal, and that I don't like.
Advertising in general is one of the biggest evils there is. It is just a bunch of deception. We watch no TV, only commercial free streams. I've blocked so many ads on FB it's almost like when it started. I see and block maybe one or two a day. I think advertising should be outlawed. People are too gullible and the cost of all of that misinformation on our society is too high.
That's the unfortunate time we live in. Anything you can pay for in order to be before others can be rated the same way. The same for sponsored results in search engines.
But as I mentioned, it's too much information nowadays and too much communication that made this. If you are living without any internet and transportation is limited you won't get that much advertising and then free content will be probably created only by a handful of enthusiasts.
I heard somewhere that all the money FB makes on ads could be made by changing each user a one time fee of a few bucks. People put up with more and more so they just keep piling it on.
It seems everything is an ad now days. The internet is now like a walk through the tourist part of Tijuana. So much crap in your face you can't think. Sites like Fstoppers does a good job of not going crazy, but many sites are just nuts. That is why I come here.
Thanks Mark, we do appreciate your comment.
Actually on Facebook people pay with their private information which many give wholeheartedly (and carelessly) away. So, in terms of data value, it's way more than the profit from the ads.
That is my point. All of that info and stuff they throw at us, and our info they sell nets them about $5 a person. It's crazy how much it ends up truely costing us as users.
I'm only offended by 2 things:
1) The lack of disclosures of financial relationships between companies and the photographers that promote their products
2) Company 'ambassadors' pretending to give unbiased reviews of products
Number 1 doesn’t bother me only for the simple fact that a lot of people on IG will review items in hopes to catch the attention of that company and become an ambassador for said company later.
Number 2 is something I do have an issue with. And as an ambassador for a well known filter company, when I actually do give real world reviews of, let’s say a polarizer in this case, I point out that being able to accomplish a certain look to a photo is because I used a polarizer, and that it’s not specifically because I used my companies polarizer.
Dishonest "independent" reviews can be made by non-ambassadors too and you will have the same issue. We would all have the same issue, because this is sometimes misleading if they're giving praise to a bad product. This is why we need more trusted sources that we can make the right conclusion for a given product. But that's quite a different topic, I think. A review is clearly an advertisement (unless it's negative) we consciously digest.
I'm talking about honesty here. And if the presenter is honest I don't really care if the content has or lacks disclosures. What impresses me more is when they say they aren't paid. But if the person is not honest, nothing about what they say about disclosures or results from the review can be trusted.
The point is that I want to know when there is a blatant conflict of interest.
If the person is not honest you can't trust their words but kind of guess if they're lying or not. This is the way we read everything on the internet today: with caution...
as soon as I see "ambassador" written or I know him to be, I never click. they are paid to say only good things about the product and youll never hear anything negative.
a lot of info thats connected to money and today im VERY hesitant on what I click.
I do like product reviews of lenses and cameras that allow untouched raw and jpeg download for me to assess, otherwise I dont give a rats ass what his opinion is of the product.
I watched the fs "light" review where they hated on the product. I have no doubt something about money triggered them to give such a terrible review. im absolutely certain. no one give such hateful reviews. it was led with emotion.
It depends on the reviewer and their agreement with the company that sells that product or service. Here at Fstoppers we are reviewing products we like and products we are given by certain companies. We know that they'd like to hear good things about the products, but we make sure they (the vendors) are aware of the fact the article will sound artificial if we point out only the good sides. Under each review of ours you can see what the pros and the cons of using that product or service are.
The way something is reviewed can cut your relationship with the vendor or with the audience. Which one is more valuable to you as a reviewer? Can you keep them both? If you go the honest way you will either not review the product (if it's too bad) or the vendor will be reasonable enough to cope with the fact there can be two sides of the coin in a review.
So, it really depends on the reviewer.
As for the light review, it's published for several purposes:
- for our own entertainment (and it is indeed);
- for our own assessment on the potential danger from supporting crown-funded projects;
- to be aware of the quality of that certain product;
I'm always glad (as a client) when I see an honest bad review of a product I haven't purchased yet.
"I'm always glad (as a client) when I see an honest bad review of a product I haven't purchased yet"
yes! many reviewers are hesitant to say negatives about the item or try to downplay it.
for instance ken rockwell used to review things and list negatives. now its either positive or he just mentions the features, but not negative at all. EVERYONE has their own interest in mind and bottom line deals with whats added to the wallet.
People are prone to change (for the good or the bad). In my opinion when someone puts their all eggs in one basket is prone to a negative change, i.e. if they rely solely on making profit from reviews without actually producing anything valuable such as growing tomatoes and selling them at the farmers market. It's like lending your frontyard as an area for billboards for a living. As long as you are paid, you are OK to raise any poster, because your life depends on that...
I'm not bothered. If it helps the creator keep making free resources, I'm all for it. Fstopper does this quite often by including affiliate links and sponsored content.
...and if the articles helped we, at Fstoppers, would be quite happier :)
I think the "do you mind being advertised to?" is a Red Herring or some sort of other logical fallacy. I should brush up on all of them, I guess.
But, this is social media. Everybody complains about the ads, but we all know there's just no free lunch. Facebook and Instagram etc. were wonderful before they got ads, but they'd all be bankrupt/de-funded by now if it weren't for advertising.
If anything, I'm glad that Google is in charge of most of these ads now, because most banner ads are just tripods and lenses other stuff that I googled recently, instead of gross ads for ED pills or local singles.
But, let's get to the REAL ISSUE, that is kind of being ignored here:
There is in fact un-disclosed, paid content, and its entirely biased. It is the next generation of guerrilla marketing, I suppose.
Large corporations are creating connections with content producers, or even creating their own content-production websites or personalities, and using these connections and outlets to /pretend/ to review stuff objectively, or provide unbiased general education, etc. When in reality, they're largely on the payroll of that corporation. I'm not talking about disclosed, "paid content" on a website that usually posts its own content. That, good or bad, is different. I'm taking about un-disclosed content, and fabricated / facade identities that either keep their sponsors very hush-hush, or don't disclose them at all.
In ACTUAL news reporting and media, this is literally illegal; you could be fined and/or lose your credentials for doing stuff like this.
But, since this is the wild wild west, (the realm of photography, and mere "social media influencers") ...it's an anything goes free-for-all.
So, the real message here should be a call to all content production websites and personalities, to disclose their sponsors and be totally honest about who pays their bills. Because, in my opinion, raising the bar across the board, and taking this line of work as seriously as if it were "the real media", can only result in positive things, better career stability, better profitability of our business models, etc.
Also, the message here is to content consumers- NEVER trust a review or any type of educational content that recommends products, unless you truly know and trust that source. Otherwise, you're just being advertised to.
Being the wild west you can't trust even those who say they are not paid. It's up to your own judgement if the review is biased or not. The same with "independent news websites."
I absolutely agree that you can't "just trust people" when they're claiming to be honest about who pays their bills.
But, that's what getting to know someone better is all about. You may not be able to meet in-person for a beer with Jared Polin or Ken Rockwell, (names used for /comic/ example only!) ...but you can at least follow someone's content for long enough to get a better sense of what they're about.
I don't know about you, but I can generally sniff out an ulterior motive. It's not an exact science, obviously, but it's still a very important skill that we shouldn't let slip away from our arsenal of human talents that can't be replaced by robots- our ability to sense when something's fishy...
It's good to have people who sense that from further away and if comments are heavily moderated at least one can expose such a behavior in their own blog.
I am offended. Free is FREE. if I wanted to see ads I would watch fstoppers... oh wait.
It's indeed free content if you can read it or view it without paying. For example, I learned most of the things I know by paying certain good photographers and filmmakers to educate me. And I paid a lot. Would I give all that away for free?
If you work as a carpenter, for example, would you rather teach your clients how to make all furniture by themselves and starve the rest of your life?
As I said, completely free content can be only made by enthusiasts who don't pay their bills through that type of craft. But if their employers decide to use the same scheme they won't be able to pay their enthusiastic employees.
Offended? No. Sometimes I get annoyed if the advertisements or product placement get a bit excessive, but if I'm watching free content, I figure that the money has to come from somewhere. Few things in life are truly free. As to where the line between "excessive" and "acceptable" is, I think that's a personal thing and everyone will draw it at a different point. If half of the video is slow close-up pans of the product's logo and buttons/dials, then that's excessive. Mention the product and point out how much it costs, where we can buy it, and why you think it's a great product. Don't turn it into a Burger King ad.
The only time I actually get offended is if the video promises one thing and doesn't deliver it at all. Think about all of the videos you've probably seen at some point that say "I'm going to teach you how to do X" and they spend the entire time telling some anecdotal story or maybe something tangentially related only at the end to tell you that if you actually want to "learn how to do X", you can buy their tutorial, sign up for a paid webinar, etc. It doesn't offend me that they're trying to sell their tutorial or webinar. It offends me that they're outright lying about what the video will offer me and then proceeding to waste my time without ever delivering in the end. Give me the information you promised and THEN offer your tutorial or webinar for further information....
Yes, this is when those content producers rely on the clickbait and only seek profit. The worst case scenario is when they pay to get their stuff advertised and promoted...
No. Everybody has to make a living. And if they offer a "service" for free, let them advertise as long as it doesnt interfere with the video. I dont get the mentality about people complaining "he is only doing it for the money and not for the fans". Well, no sh*# Sherlock. Unless you pay his rent and food stop complaining.