mobius I will generally look for reviews by people who have spent their own money and are not affiliated in any way by the companies involved. Being sent a product to review does not count for me, as it’s already biased.
If you’re not spending the money and using the item regularly, it’s not a review - it’s subsidised marketing.
I half agree, and certainly with WHY you see it that way. But there’s a problem. Or two. At least one has already been referred to.
If you want a Youtibe channel to be successful, there are a limited number of ways to do it. Pretty much all of them, via one mechanism or another, and to varying degrees, are going to depends on factors like number of subscribers, number of views (and, what percentage of a video is viewed), and submitting content to a known timetable among them, because the degree to which your channel is promoted by the algoritms will have a dramatic impact on those factors. The process is a kind-of positive feedback loop. It’s an admittedly complex blend and, yes, you can independently fund, such as via Patreon etc, but that’s still going to be somewhat dependent on numbers of subscribers.
One factor on which there’s huge evidence is, for reviews, if you don’t get the review up on launch day, a day 1 review, that video doesn’t do well in those viewing stats. Why? I assume, in fast moving areas like tech reviews, lots of people are waiting for the reviews, which will be NDA’d before a given date, to come out but when that NDA (Non-Disclosue Agreement) lifts, will watch a few videos, make up their mind, order or not, and not bother watching vides on that preoduct again, after that.
Sure, quite a few people come along later interested in buying, but the algorithm promotes videos up the search list that ‘performed well’ in YT’s stats, and list them higher up the search rankings, and that will almost always be those that benefitted from Day 1 reviews.
But, you cannot submit a Day 1 review that took 2 days, 2 weeks or even 2 months to prepare, on day 1, UNLESS you got the kit from the manufacturer beore day 1, and to do that, there has to be a relationship with that manufacturer and if they chose to implement an NDA (which they usually do), you either sign it or don’t get the review product in time for a Day 1 review.
If you don’t submit day 1 reviews, the channel does comparatively badly, and so does your income from it. You can’t submit Day 1 reviews without the manufacturer suppying the product in advance, in time to allow you to review it.
In an ideal world, nobody would get advance product, everybody would have to buy it, test it, review it and get the video pre and post-production stuff done, and uploaded at the same time. i.e. an equal chance. But suppose your channel, just starting up, is you alone doing everything, but mine, with half a dozen full-time editors, a full lab staff to test, a writing team doing scripts, logistics and warehouusing, large premises, several fully kitted studios, etc,, well, my production process is going to be much faster than yours, and on multiple products in any given time period, so you’re still going to be uploading days later than my (theoretical) channel, even if we both have to buy our product in the local retailer, so I still get the Day 1 boost, and your channel suffers accordingly, because I have the benefit of scale.
It’s just the way the world works, I’m afraid. I wish it didn’t, but unless your viewpoint can convince Youtube to rebalance their algoritms, it will continue to work that way.
About the only counter to all that is for channels to be fully open and honest about how they get product. There’s nothing inherently wrong with “free” product from manufacturers PROVIDED it’s a loan, not a gift, and provided it’s not used as a mechanism to twist reviewer’s arms for positive reviews, or your future access is threatened. And yeah, that does happen.
But even then, the real world intervenes. THe reality is manufacturers will have a certain promotional budget for “review” units. They’ll only have just so many, and as well as legit reviewers requesting kit, will have those simply after free gear. After having (hopefully) weeded those out, the next issue is that even collecting review samples has a cost (in couriers and internal logistics efforts). Depending on the nature of the product, getting them back (i,.e doing a loan, not a gift) can end up more expensive for the supplier than just writing it off and leaving it with the reviewer. The likelihood of a manufacturer wanting it back will depend on the cost. If I did a £5000 Nikon/Canon/Olympus/whatever camera (and I did, regularly) they’d nearly always want them back, but a £20 USB hub? It’d cost more in courier charges than it’s worth.
But even with that £5000 camera, they didn’t always want them back, or more often, not straight away. Why? Several reasons. First, they like regular reviewers to be familiar with their high margin or high-volume products. Best familiarity comes from having it available to me, here. Secondly, if I review a Nikon this month and a Canon next month, I can do a direct comparison ONLY if they’re both here on those later reviews. So it wasn’t at all unknown for high end models to sit here for months, or a year, even. Then, maybe, get switched out for the Mk.2. Also, if they do send one out, after the round of reviewers they’re willing to ship a £5k camera to have seen it, what use is it to Nikon/Canon, etc. Oh, they’ll want one or two on the shelves for possible later projects, but probably not their entire “loan” stock. They get more value if they stay with reviewers that will continue to use them to test against in those comparisons. If I was the second or third person to get a particluar loan stock model, that was much more likely to have done it’s job, review-wise, as far as manufacturers were concerned and it was less likely they’d want it back., at least, immediately.
HOWEVER …. it’s still their property, even a year or two later. They COULD ask for it back quite a long time later, and the agreement I’d signed to get it meant if they didn’t get it back when they asked for it, they could bill, at the full MRP for it. So it’s not like I could sell it or anything, without taking a huge risk.
A “free” product, even a full computer system or very expensive camera (and often lenses) is not quite the inducement to a biased review outsiders might think. I remember once walking roun a gardens, taking test pictures, with over £60k in camera and lenses with me, including top of the range, Canon, Nikon and Minolta SLRs, and lenses. But my personal camera gear, including lenses, wasn’t any of that. What was very nice, though, was being able to ring those manufacturers when going on a special trip of some sort, even a holiday, and requesting a loan of an unusual but expensive lens for a few weeks. That,, was very nice to be able to do, and often (but not always) they would agree.
But “free” equipment? Never really an inducement to me. In many ways, especially for bulky items, it was a right royal PITA. Can you imagine the logistics issues I had as a freelancer, working from home, comparing 20 (count ’em, flipping TWENTY) damn laser printers. I needed a warehouse, not a home. I had the damn things stacked everywhere, including temporarily in the bathroom (which was NOT popular with the other half) and couldn’t wait to get rid of them all. :D
Anyway, back on topic, “free” equipment isn’t quite the challenge to unbiased coverage you might think, these days. Much more of a challenge is when/if a supplier threatens to withhold loan kit, in time to do Day 1 reviews. For any professional, that could spell the death off the channel. Even buying their own hardware to review isn’t a solution, because of the impact not having it in time to do a day 1 review had on channel performance, and therefore income.
