{"id":230190,"date":"2016-07-12T13:03:33","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=230190"},"modified":"2016-07-12T13:03:33","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T13:03:33","slug":"warner-bros-paid-youtubers-thousands-to-promote-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=230190","title":{"rendered":"Warner Bros paid YouTubers thousands to promote games"},"content":{"rendered":"

YouTubers including PewDiePie were paid tens of thousands of dollars to give video games positive reviews, it’s been claimed.<\/p>\n

Warner Bros, makers of Shadow of Mordor, has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after they were accused of hiding the payments from people.<\/p>\n

The FTC, a consumers rights organisation, stated Warner Bros had deceived customers by paying YouTubers to promote the game without admitting it.<\/p>\n

The company is now banned from hiding similar deals in the future and from pretending sponsored videos are the work of independent producers.<\/p>\n

\"Middle-Earth:<\/div>\n

“Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid sales pitches,” said Jessica Rich from the FTC.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

“Companies like Warner Bros need to be straight with consumers in their online ad campaigns.”<\/p>\n

According to the FTC, Warner Bros paid some YouTubers tens of thousands of dollars to promote Shadow of Mordor.<\/p>\n

They also gave them a free, advance-release version of the game and told them how to promote it.<\/p>\n

It also claims YouTubers were advised to put the video’s sponsored status under the “Show More” section.<\/p>\n

That means the information wouldn’t have been visible on videos watched through Twitter and Facebook.<\/p>\n

\"Middle<\/div>\n

The videos earned more than 5.5 million views for Warner Bros with PewDiePie’s subscribers accounting for 3.7 million of them.<\/p>\n

In 2014 the online game magazine Gamasutra found that out of more than 40 YouTubers with more than 5,000 subscribers, a quarter had taken money to produce sponsored content.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year Trevor ‘TmarTn’ Martin and Tom ‘ProSyndicate’ Cassell were criticised after it was revealed they actually owned a gambling site that they’d advertised in several videos.<\/p>\n

We’ve contacted PewDiePie for a comment but are still waiting for a response.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YouTubers including PewDiePie were paid tens of thousands of dollars to give video games positive reviews, it’s been claimed. Warner Bros, makers of Shadow of Mordor, has reached a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after they were accused of hiding the payments from people. The FTC, a consumers rights organisation, stated Warner Bros […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":230191,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/230191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}