Post by Sektor on Jan 20, 2014 17:09:40 GMT -5
This weekend, word started leaking of a new promotion offering Machinima video partners an additional $3 CPM (i.e., $3 per thousand video views) for posting videos featuring Xbox One content. The promotion was advertised by Machinima's UK community manager in a since-deleted tweet, and it also appears on Machinima's activity feed on Poptent, a clearinghouse for these kind of video marketing campaigns. The Poptent page also mentions an earlier campaign surrounding the Xbox One's launch in November, which offered an additional $1 CPM for videos "promoting the Xbox One and its release games."
To qualify for the campaign (and the extra payments), Machinima partners had to post a video including at least 30 seconds of Xbox One game footage that mentioned the Xbox One by name and included the tag "XB1M13." A YouTube search for that relatively unique term turns up "about 6,590 results," but a quick scan of those results shows only a few hundred that actually seem to be tagged for the Machinima promotion.
That's not the case, however. According to a leaked copy of the full legal agreement behind the promotion, video creators "may not say anything negative or disparaging about Machinima, Xbox One, or any of its Games" and must keep the details of the promotional agreement confidential in order to qualify for payment. In other words, to get the money, video makers have to speak positively (or at least neutrally) about the Xbox One, and they can't say they're being paid to do so.
The arrangement as described might go against the FTC's guidelines for the use of endorsements in advertising, which demand full disclosure when there is "a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement." The document offers a specific example of a video game blogger who gets a free game system that he later talks about on his blog. That blogger would need to disclose that gift, the FTC says, because his opinion is "disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious." That same reasoning would seem to apply to the opinions expressed by the video makers participating in this promotion. Neither Microsoft nor Machinima responded immediately to a request for comment on the matter, but we'll let you know if and when we hear from them.
arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/
To qualify for the campaign (and the extra payments), Machinima partners had to post a video including at least 30 seconds of Xbox One game footage that mentioned the Xbox One by name and included the tag "XB1M13." A YouTube search for that relatively unique term turns up "about 6,590 results," but a quick scan of those results shows only a few hundred that actually seem to be tagged for the Machinima promotion.
That's not the case, however. According to a leaked copy of the full legal agreement behind the promotion, video creators "may not say anything negative or disparaging about Machinima, Xbox One, or any of its Games" and must keep the details of the promotional agreement confidential in order to qualify for payment. In other words, to get the money, video makers have to speak positively (or at least neutrally) about the Xbox One, and they can't say they're being paid to do so.
The arrangement as described might go against the FTC's guidelines for the use of endorsements in advertising, which demand full disclosure when there is "a connection between the endorser and the seller of the advertised product that might materially affect the weight or credibility of the endorsement." The document offers a specific example of a video game blogger who gets a free game system that he later talks about on his blog. That blogger would need to disclose that gift, the FTC says, because his opinion is "disseminated via a form of consumer-generated media in which his relationship to the advertiser is not inherently obvious." That same reasoning would seem to apply to the opinions expressed by the video makers participating in this promotion. Neither Microsoft nor Machinima responded immediately to a request for comment on the matter, but we'll let you know if and when we hear from them.
arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/stealth-marketing-microsoft-paying-youtubers-for-xbox-one-mentions/
Yes, Major Nelson said that he wanted the online hate to stop. And it appears that MS is willing to open up the wallet to help make that happen.
Just a personal request, but can we keep the "But Sony/Nintendo too!" responses out of this thread? No one is saying that MS is the only company that does this.
