One of the things that surprised me about tv ads in the US is not only how many there are, but how many include celebrities?? Like actors and other famous people?? And it's so weird to see someone in movies be very serious and then see them in random ads for drinks or INSURANCES???
In France, I've only seen celebrities in ads for beauty or skincare brands, and usually they're international brands, so it's basically the same beauty ads as in the US, but dubbed in French. I don't think i ever see French ads with French celebrities???
I know it's common practice in China too for celebrities to be sponsored by multiple brands so show up in ads a lot, and I'm tentatively gonna say probably in South Korea it's similar? But I'm curious about other countries? Is it normal for you where you live?
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Sponsorships throughout youtube
Ah, sponsorships. Just talking about them is a minefield. Thankfully, nobody reads anything I say, so I don't need to worry.
The problem with sponsorships becomes apparent with the one question you never ask a YouTuber:
"Do you actually use this product in your daily life?"
Its not really a fair question, because they can't answer it safely. If they say no, they risk losing that sponsorship, and some of their income. If they don't use it, you're forcing them to lie.
You could argue they shouldn't be shilling it if they don't use it, but YouTubers don't have that many other ways to make money, so it's more complicated than that. As long as they don't lie about the product, and think it's okay, even if they personally don't have a use for it, I think it's fine.
However, it also a bit deceptive. people come to watch your content, and you're using that to make sure they watch an ad too. Of course, people can just skip it. Whats the solution to this?
I'm not sure, but the solution I like best is when they turn the Sponsorships INTO something you want to watch.
Heres some examples:
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Nostalgia Critic: the Ad segments
Channel Awesome is a very controversial topic, and its not hard to see why. Beyond the drama and scandals, Doug Walker, while generally considered a nice, well-meaning guy, just isn't that funny a lot of the time. However, I personally quite like his ad segments.
They aren't connected, and are all completely random, with everything Dr. Frankenstein pitching you Stamps.Com to a door dashing through the street pitching you DoorDash. They don't always work, but they do always try to make a new one each time, and through a combination of just enough self-deprecation and lots of surrealism, its still pretty entertaining. Theres an ad for Chime, a money-saving app, where the skit is someone talking to a dollar bill like they would a bratty teenager, and the joke being that you shouldn't always have to worry about money. If that sounds funny, thats pretty much the level of humor of most of them.
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RYAN GEORGE: THE ADSTRONAUT
Ryan George writes comedy sketches loosely taking place in the same universe where he plays everyone, certain animals can talk, and Jurassic Park was released before the first time someone ever shoplifted.
I'm a fan, if you couldn't tell.
Above is the Adstronaut, an astronaut with a best(and only) friend is a green alien named Florp-Flap, who has a strained relationship with him. Ryan puts effort into making the sponsorship sections as funny as the sketch itself, with ongoing gags and ridiculous reactions. However, it's still separate from the sketch itself.
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TWA: The TWA expanded universe.
Terrible Writing advice is a channel dedicated to telling you what NOT to do in writing via sarcasm, and it's glorious. The Sponsorship Wars are after-video skits in which the various archetypes he's established interact off of each other, becoming something of actual characters in the process, and try to steal the sponsorships from each other. They go one after another, and all tie in, starting off slowly but quickly escalating into a massive plot thats actually pretty entertaining.
There are two sides here: the Knights of Artistic Integrity, well-meaning but not extremely competent warriors who believe Ads will doom the universe, try to convince everyone to relinquish their ads. Their opponent is Inner Greed, the embodiment of Greed itself who wants to take over the entire universe, and then beyond, through the power of-well-money. Greed is the one pitching the products in the latest sketches, despite being framed as the villain, and theres actually an undertone of anti-ad commentary throughout most of it, with the knights of artistic integrity fighting for a world where content creators don't need to sell themselves out and fill everything with ads, and are paid and valued for what they do.
He's still selling stuff, so its mostly seen as an unfortunate necessity, but its actually fairly engaging and funny. Theres a bit where the Dark Lord keeps finding himself accidentally using stock Hero lines and almost vomiting. It's weirdly adorable, and an excellent way to make someone actually want to get through ads.
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Neytirix: The sponsor segments
Neytirix is a criminally underrated art, animation(And sometimes music) channel, specializing in cute, cool, and creepy. They often redraw things to their own views of them, usually either making it adorable, awesome as heck, or incredibly terrifying. The spectrum is generally that cute things become creepy, creepy things become cute, and cool things can become either, or just more cool.
Onto the main topic. While it started as an off-hand joke, the ad sections are now a full-blown story and sometimes just the entire video. Above is Sponsor Pufferbunny, the spokesman of SkillShare. He appears any time anyone says 'skills', has a disdain for everything and everyone except SkillShare, and a taste for blood. However, he can't survive in our world for long. Once he's delivered the sponsor, he explodes into a puddle of gore-if your lucky. If you're the one who summoned him, either you explode when he appears, or once you've gotten through the entire segment, you die. Its highly implied to be some form of mind-control, with the people involved not fully knowing what their saying, and not being able to stop once they do.
Whenever the ad isn't for SkillShare, there tends to be a different horrific monster, but Pufferbunny still keeps showing up. Its end goal is unclear, and its methods are unknown, but if you see it, your only real chance of survival is to finish the ad. If you're the one who summoned him, its a coin flip at best as to whether its you or someone else who explodes. If not, your best chance is to just keep completely quiet, not giving a single prompt to segment to advertising. Never, under ANY circumstance, say the word 'skills'. That, or already start using SkillShare, and it'll leave you alone.
Theres alot of body horror, and the series starts in the end of random other videos(Redrawing peoples submitted characters, redrawing minecraft, model-buidling, random content about her pets)
But recently the story has become alot more connected with the redesign series.
I could go on and on about this channel: how the main author avatar has an entire factory for redesigning original characters, how its horrifically painful for them and they come out mutated and monstrous, how she barely seems aware of it and actually seems to think they like it to some extent, How the main characters are basically MLP oc's that are subjected to incredible horrors, and more. But this is personally my favorite way sponsorships have ever been handled: Litterally making an entire story about them.
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the only things that annoy me about miniminuteman is the “comedic” loud slurping (people with misophonia exist, sorry), and the sponsor, which so far has only been “Ground News”, a “le ebic enlightened centrist” viewpoint app that purports to state which news sources are biased, and what those biases are.
Like, okay, getting multiple viewpoints is good too a point, because surprise, some viewpoints are flat out nonfactual and sourced from hate, while the “opposing bias” is just, like, reality.
For instance, most right wing news sources will purport that trans people are paedophiles who deserve to be exterminated like vermin. This is wrong, morally and factually.
The opposing viewpoint, which the app would like to purport is a “biased viewpoint”, is that trans people are humans and deserve the same basic respect afforded to ethnic-majority cis men by most societies. Which, y’know is true, in every sense of the word. Humanity evolved with cooperation and empathy as the core of our interactions. Love is built into our very DNA. Those who don’t appear to love, have had it abused and beaten out of them by conditioning. This “viewpoint” is just reality for our species.
What’s supposed to be the enlightened middle ground this app wants you to consider? That trans people are only half-human and should have fewer rights, but also be glad that they aren’t being fucking murdered?
Not too mention the fact that the developers are obviously going to have biases of their own that effect the way the app is designed and formatted.
I wish he’d just not accept sponsorships like that. Or even any at all. Like, buddy, what’s the fucking monthly 3800$ on patreon for then?
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