Hello my dudes, my name is Tiffany! Welcome
back to my series, Internet Analysis, where I like to research and discuss things
relevant to social issues and media. Today's video is going to explore those sketchy ads under
viral tweets. When a tweet starts to get popular, how do you take advantage of the attention,
what should you do with a drop of clout? Of course, you can promote your
SoundCloud. Wow, this blew up! You can promote your Instagram and
other socials. Or, if you want to use your 15 seconds of Twitter fame for good, maybe
you're gonna drop some petitions, GoFundMe's, maybe promote some small businesses. But you
also have the opportunity to make some coin, and that is what leads to items like
these, being promoted below viral tweets. If you are an active Twitter user,
you most likely have seen at least some of these items, including the Ocean Galaxy
light, the 'Sunset lamp', this detox mask, various Squish plushies, Slime Clean, and other
kitchen or cleaning products, and perhaps a seal pillow. These are all very meme-able items, kind
of gimmicky stuff, the sort of stuff that you'd see in a Spencer's gift shop or something.
So, in this video, we're going to discuss how these deals happen, and then later we're
going to dive into the specific products and the companies selling them. So, as usual, I
asked on my Instagram and Twitter if any of you happen to have experienced this. Did you
have a popular Tweet, and then you were approached with some deals to promote some things?
So, gathering information from some people that I messaged, along with other research, there seems
to be a standard way that these deals go down. First of all, they are very casual, you'll just
get a DM, like, "how much for promo"? From what I've seen, most people get offered between $10
to $20 USD to post one Tweet about a product, and sometimes the influencer will negotiate to only
leave the Tweet up for a limited amount of time, maybe 12 to 24 hours, and then they'll delete it.
Okay, so what do you need to do? Basically, just post this video or these photos in the
thread of your popular Tweet, so that it shows up right beneath it. In terms of captions, just
say something generic, like 'check out this cool thing, I love it'. They really don't get too,
uh, creative or enthusiastic with these, which I understand. Then, of course, add the link. We're
gonna agree on a specific time for you to post, and then you'll get paid via Paypal or Cash
App. And in terms of the follower response, or the people who see these Tweets
and then see the ads, you get some encouraging responses, you know, get that coin.
Of course, you also get comments calling you a 'sellout' or a 'scammer'. But I found that if
you're just a random Twitter user, or maybe an anonymous page, a meme page, you probably don't
really care that much, about getting a little bit of a negative reaction to these Tweets. Unlike
influencers or content creators, who have more of a dedicated following who care about what they
specifically promote, and they might have to be a little bit more cautious with their ads. But
again, for the average Twitter user, the risk is pretty low. If you can make a little bit of money
from a Tweet, why not? Well, let's get into that. Legal and ethical problem number one, undisclosed
ads. The majority of these paid promotions are not labeled as such. Usually they don't say #ad
or #sponsored, or any other common indicator. But they're very obviously ads, any Twitter
person reading this thread can tell that these are just not, like, natural, 'Oh, by the way,
I love these lights, here's the link!' People recognize them as ads, you're not necessarily
fooling anyone, so my question is always, what is the benefit in not declaring an ad an
ad? If people already recognize it as an ad, and honestly, if someone sees it and wants to buy that
item, I don't think they're gonna care whether it's technically an ad or not, they're
just gonna buy the thing. And by the way, some of these Tweets do have #ad which is good,
but it's also confusing, because I've seen, even in the same Tweet thread, some posts are labeled
#ad and some are not. It's very inconsistent, and it definitely clearly depends
on who is paying for each promotion. So, in this case, the Twitter user posting the ads
is now an influencer, a micro influencer maybe, or a new influencer, but still. So,
the influencer may not know the rules, the FTC guidelines that you have to declare
when you're paid to say or promote something, or if you've been gifted something, you are
supposed to mention that legally. And, again, a lot of these people probably haven't done this
before, so the companies reaching out to pay these influencers should absolutely be requiring that
they label these posts as ads. But they're not, because these companies usually don't seem to care
about the legality of it all. they're usually not influencer marketing professionals, and we'll
get into that later. And by the way, throughout this video, I'm speaking in generalizations,
when I'm talking about specific products or specific companies, my vague accusations
don't necessarily apply to each and every one. I'm using these as examples, but I can't know for
sure which of these companies or products is legit or is doing the work that they should be doing.
So, you know, "allegedly" ! in the commentary or drama communities, 'allegedly' is a
magic word, protects you from anything. Speaking of sponsors, today's
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Thank you Likewise! let's get back into the video! So, why do companies choose to promote
their products this way? Basically, the whole point is to get around Twitter's official
ad system, and their other ad guidelines. So, Twitter does have a regular ad system, where
you can buy ads, just like on Facebook or Google or anything else. But apparently, they
cost more than this influencer marketing strategy, and are apparently less effective.
So, some companies choose to just bypass this altogether by paying people on Twitter
directly, for either a Tweet about the product, or to retweet another Tweet about the product.
This has been called piggyback marketing, because essentially, the brand itself doesn't have
to create original content and hope that it goes viral, they can find rising, up and coming
Tweets and just piggyback on that success. Take advantage of something that's already popular,
and get some eyes on your product. And again, another benefit is, they're often working with
pretty inexperienced influencers, so you're able to take advantage of them, you can charge lower
rates, because these Twitter users don't really know what an ad is worth. So, if you offer them
10 or 20 bucks, they're probably gonna say yes. So, I don't think there's anything inherently
wrong about doing sponsorships, obviously, I do sponsorships here on this channel
very often! but disclosure is important, and legally required. So, make sure you check the
FTC guidelines if you're in the United States, and if you're in any other country, just make
sure you check your local guidelines as well, because you don't want to be breaking the law. And
also, you want to be informing your other fellow internet users when you're doing a paid promotion.
Legal and ethical problem number two, false product endorsements. The FTC basically
says you cannot lie about a product that you're being paid to promote. So, if you have not tried
a product, or if you hated it, you can't say that you loved it. In these viral Tweet negotiations
that often take place within a matter of minutes, obviously the influencer has not tried the
product, they've never seen the product, they're not even being offered a chance to try the
product, because they are supposed to promote it now. I mean, maybe they happen to own the thing,
but that is incredibly unlikely. And also, the photos and videos that they're using to promote it
are not theirs, they're sent by the company. And, by the way that the Tweets are captioned, it is
supposed to imply that the Twitter user themselves has used the product, enjoys the product,
personally endorses it, and that these photos and videos are theirs. Sometimes, they Tweet something
vague, like, "check out this thing", which doesn't imply that they've used it, there's no personal
endorsement, but still they are promoting it. Legal and ethical problem number three, monetizing
stolen Tweets. This might blow your mind, but a lot of things on the internet are not
original, much of it is 100% stolen, especially on Twitter. There are tons of accounts that get
popular purely by stealing Tweets, word for word, and if it gets popular enough, they're able to get
these deals, and they can monetize stolen content. This also happens on Instagram, lots of meme
pages, parody pages, whatever. It's common, but it's still unethical, okay? Maybe it's
naive of me to wish for a better internet... So now, let's get into the products. You know,
the things being sold? What's up with them? Again, I asked you guys on Instagram and Twitter, and
most of you have not ever bought these products, or tried them. Some people told me that they have
bought various things from these sorts of ads, and that they never arrived. Is it a scam? Perhaps.
Our YouTube pal Sarah Hawkinson told me that she bought the sunset lamp, and that particularly has
been very popular lately on Instagram and TikTok. You know, it's aesthetic, it sets the mood, we
love different colored lights these days! Also, many of us have been locked in our homes for over
a year, and we can always use more light, even if it's artificial. *crying baby* Mood! there's
always a crying baby in my videos these days. Anyway, then there's the problem of knockoffs.
Many of these products were originally created at a higher price point, higher quality. As far
as I can tell, the original sunset lamp was made in Italy, and costs over a thousand dollars. So,
I can understand why cheaper knockoffs have become popular. Then there's the saga of the seal pillow,
which was created in partnership with an aquarium, and it is based on a real seal, this is her. As
we unfortunately see in almost every industry, concepts and ideas are stolen, people create
cheaper versions, and often the original marketing materials are stolen as well. So if you buy
one of these things, and it eventually arrives, if it ever arrives at all, you might have
expected a sweet, huggable seal pillow, and maybe you received a small, angry seal.
Or, maybe the product doesn't work as promised, or it's just broken upon arrival. Maybe it
smells like chemicals, or it's such terrible quality that you just don't end up using it.
By the way, soapbox moment, please don't buy shitty gimmicky products that'll just
end up in the trash, or something that you'll laugh at once, and then forget about.
Mindful consumption, we can all do better. So, what about the companies selling these
products? I don't know exactly which of these companies, I can't say for sure, but many of
these companies selling these products are drop shippers. Basically, drop shipping is when
a customer buys from a store, the store buys the product from the supplier, and the supplier ships
directly to the customer. So basically, the drop shipper is a middleman, they do not have any of
the products in stock, they don't handle shipping or handling, they are just the storefront.
So, when we're talking about these viral Twitter ads, the influencers have not tried the
product, and most of the time the drop shippers selling the product probably haven't even tried
it either. And that brings us to this whole "get rich quick online", drop shipping, Amazon
seller, e-commerce community on YouTube. I learned a lot from watching these videos, they're very
hustle culture, they are very capitalist. It's all about the profit, baby! Pain in my eyes.
So, this is basically how it goes: the drop shipper finds a viral or trendy product...
"It's actually a phone case that holds airpods, so I thought it was really really cool, and I
think potentially this would go viral on Twitter." "A really attractive, sexy product."
"I was just scrolling through Twitter, wasting a bunch of my time, and I saw this
product going viral, right? I was like, damn, I wonder if like somebody's drop shipping
this, right? I was like, damn, there's a demand, so you know I gotta supply it!"
This guy happened to see a Tweet about this mug with Arnold on it, and he was
like, oh, I can take advantage of this popular Tweet and I can sell this product, there are
all these people who like this Tweet! So, he sets up a storefront really quick, and then
asks the original Tweeter to promote the store, and the guy's like, did you just set this up?
"I clicked it, and he goes, did you just set this up? And I said 'yep', and I go, 'oh, I
didn't see the 'just', because at this point I didn't want him, like, copying what- exactly
what I did, and then him taking all the money. 'I-I set it up a bit ago with organic promo',
'ah'. So now he thinks I'm the actual owner of this case that he just posted about."
And the vast majority, if not all of these products, are from Aliexpress, which,
if you're familiar, it's basically a Chinese wholesale retailer, where you can buy
very, very cheap products, and often lots of knockoffs. So, looking at this Airpod phone case,
for example, on Aliexpress, it's being sold for, like, four dollars each, and then shipping
from China can obviously take a long time, sometimes up to 30 to 50 days... which is why
a lot of customers complain when they buy these products, because they take so long to arrive,
if they even do at all, and often they're just not expecting the shipping to take that long.
We're in this Amazon Prime kind of world, where we expect things to arrive within a day
or two, so the thought of waiting like, weeks, or even months for something to arrive, that
you probably didn't even care about that much.. by the time it shows up you're not even
gonna remember that you ordered it. Anyway, then you create a quick shop website
you can set it up in like 30 minutes. And again, none of these guys in these videos
actually have the product that they're selling, so they just borrow any photos or videos
that they can find to use in their marketing. "So what I'm going to do is, I'm just going to
go through some of these videos, and try and find a video that fits my kind of mark the most.
Now, the only thing that I need to edit on this video is just replacing the TikTok watermark with
my logo watermark, and that's pretty much it." So now, you've got your product chosen, you have
your website, you have your stolen marketing materials, now you're going to find some people
who are decently popular on Twitter, but not too expensive. So, somebody with a couple
thousand Twitter followers, or a history of generating pretty popular Tweets. Offer to
pay them 10 or 20 bucks to post the Tweets, and then pay a few other accounts to re-Tweet that
Tweet, it's that easy! It could cost you 80 to 100 bucks max to do this Twitter promotion.
This guy said that his fiance has a pretty popular Twitter, she's had a
history of some Tweets going viral, so he just asks her to do the original Tweet...
"Can I use you since you go viral on Twitter?" "So you want to use me?"
"Well, not use you, but... I guess use you, to promote the Tweet. I'll give you a
percentage, I'll give a percentage." And then at the end of the video, he's
going over the financials and he says, "I never said exactly what that percentage would
be, so I'm gonna give her about one percent, that dollar and two cents, so that leaves a
total profit for me at a hundred dollars even." Excuse me, I'd be like, okay, either ask me for a
favor and I'll do it for free, or don't ask me at all, because offering me one dollar is insulting.
I don't care if you're my fiance, that's rude. Then he donated the rest, the hundred dollars
in profit, to fight Australian wildfires. okay. So basically, your business plan is, drop ship
these very cheap products, steal the marketing materials, and pay some people as little as
possible to create fake hype around the products. Nice! "CaPitaLisM BrEedS inNovAtiOn" ? By the way,
this guy was talking about his Facebook and the reviews that people leave, and he said, 'oh this
guy actually left a real review, that's cool!' "You can fake it if you want, it really depends on
how ethical you want to be. I didn't fake this..." Like, I don't know how much faith
and trust we've been putting into these random drop shippers of shitty
products, but trust them less. The floor has lowered. And now I'm
intrigued. Okay, how much do these sellers actually earn? Most of these guys average
about $100 to $150 in profit in a day, or so. "Total profit around here was about three thousand
dollars, which is pretty good for just, you know, a month. It literally took me one hour to build
this website, and barely anything to manage it." "This 24-hour challenge did $166 in net profit."
"Profit of $101.02" So yeah, there's some money to be made, but
please don't do this. Can you imagine if this video just got a bunch of people like, 'I'm
gonna drop ship the next viral Twitter product!' When I was first researching about this, I was
like, how effective could Twitter influencer marketing be? Like, how many impressions or
views do the ad Tweets get? Because obviously, they don't get much direct engagement in terms of
like, likes or retweets, because people are like, 'be gone drop shippers'! They don't get much love.
Then I thought maybe the strategy is just to flood Twitter to gain brand awareness, not necessarily
just straight sales. But like, for the brand, how valuable could one Tweet be? Because
it's so easy for it to be missed or ignored, whereas the audience is a lot more likely
to engage with a sponsored YouTube video, because there's a whole other video to watch,
along with the sponsorship. Or even a sponsored Instagram post or TikTok, they can still be
entertaining, they can still very closely resemble the unsponsored native content. But an ad Tweet
is just like, pure ad, there's nothing else there. "For Ocean Galaxy, a promotion linked to a
viral Tweet, can yield three or four orders for the lights, which sell for $50. Ocean
Galaxy light brought in about $7,000 to $8,000 in revenue from Twitter in July. It
also advertises on Facebook and Instagram, and racked up $35,000 in sales
across all platforms in that month." Another question I had is, are the
influencers being paid fairly? Obviously, we've heard those drop shippers say that
they are trying to pay as little as possible, so it's an interesting question in
terms of like, what a fair rate would be for this sort of arrangement. Again,
people can be paid $10, $20, maybe $30, that's usually around the maximum for a 24-hour
post. Sometimes the brands offer commission links, which might sound like they can make you
a lot more money, but in these situations, they probably make almost nothing, because you're
getting a tiny percentage of maybe like, four or five sales coming from your link. So, if you
happen to want to get into the viral Twitter ad game, I'd say just take a flat fee, do your time
limit, 12 to 24 hours max, and get out of there. Then I was wondering, what is a fair rate
for popular Tweets? My anonymous source in the industry basically said that there is no
standard for Twitter, unlike YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, those are a little bit easier to measure
like, engagement, your expected views or likes, or whatever, on a post. But Twitter is a weird
place for ads, especially outside of Twitter's ad platform. When you see a creator promoting
something on Twitter, it's just kind of like, it's so easy to ignore, like I said. And
also, Twitter is already such a hellscape, we do not need more ads on top of that!
By the way though, um, content creators and influencers should unionize. If you guys
know anything about any unionizing efforts, please send the info to me, because I'm
fascinated by this. We really need a lot more transparency in pay rates and standards,
because the lack of transparency in this industry leads to a lot of creators getting screwed over,
because they don't know what their worth is, and it's really hard to find people who will tell
you, 'hey, this is what I get (paid), this is what this company (paid) me for this, for this many
followers, or this many likes', so, unionize baby! And lastly, I'm going to explore this avenue,
where sometimes people are paid to promote other Tweets or other accounts, sometimes it's like
a quote Tweet situation, and this is a terrible story time. Diving into one notorious Tweet
thread that's been promoted and reposted so many times for years, it's become a meme on its own.
Content warning: toxic diet culture and fat phobia ahead, so if you want to skip this section,
you can just go to this time stamp (23:51) The original Tweet that has been reposted
and promoted and stuff is this: "I love when dudes from high school hit me up like, 'I don't
know why we didn't talk when we were younger', um, because you all made fun of me!" a
thread. And this girl starts her story time, she basically says she gained weight, she had low
confidence. 'Then it finally clicked. I remember it was a Sunday night, and my best friend had
re-Tweeted something that looked like spam, talking about this girl, Sarah, who discovered
a way to lose weight. Not really sure if it was my anxiety or whether it was subconscious,
but I just decided to read it, dot dot dot'. It loaded a page that said: 'Meet the Stanford
masters student who lost 25 pounds with her University's money!' And at first I was
confused, but I kept scrolling down out of curiosity. 'If you want to read the article here:
healthynewscenter.weightloss, blah, blah, blah'... First of all, I love when a story is
like, 'it sounded like such a scam, it sounded so not legit, it sounded
like bullshit, but believe me!' Like, those are the least trustworthy
stories! So, this particular account of Bella was created the exact same day that this
Tweet thread was posted. And again, this thread has been around for years, so like, this is a
spam account, it just keeps getting reposted. "Healthy news center! meet the Stanford
masters student who lost 25 pounds with her University's money!" And it says it was
posted today. First of all, love the appeal to respectability, or our trustworthiness in
elite academic institutions. Of course, it's a Stanford student, and
she's pursuing her masters, so we can trust her! This is Sarah Johnson, we
have an Instagram post of a 'before' and 'after'. And this has almost four and a half million
likes, including... Kylie... Jenner? Then you read this "article" -- that's generous
-- So, how did you make your discovery? She used her- her research money to figure this out.
"It's sort of a funny story. I always listen to the latest celebrity news before bed, and I
happen to come across one particular interview with a celebrity nutritionist, (unnamed), who
swore by 'Ultra X-Boost Keto' and apple cider vinegar. She claimed that all of Hollywood's elite
use it... I figured it couldn't hurt to try!" Obviously, there's nothing but red flags
in this whole Twitter thread, the story, and Sarah's article, her 'discovery'. I love that
Sarah's discovery as a Stanford masters student is literally, I just heard a celebrity nutritionist
give advice and I did it, that's my discovery. So, this scam has been around for a lot of years,
a couple of different iterations, but the basic story is the same. So, the scam is a little bit
elaborate, you know,? They- they have the product, they create the fake article, the fake
story, they definitely steal other people's weight loss photos, and before and after photos,
because that's rampant in the industry. Then they try to promote the article through Twitter,
to create these fake stories, fake threads... and you're gonna have to fall down the whole
rabbit hole and click on the things, blah-blah, to find out that it's a Keto supplement!
Again, if I have to repeat... do not buy this shit, it is a scam, it's terrible!
So, there we are! Hope you guys enjoyed today's video, diving into what the hell is up with these
sketchy products promoted under viral Tweets, and I guess the deeper you go,
the worse it is! So, that's fun. I appreciate you guys so much for watching,
and now we have our small channel shout-outs! Our first shout-out goes to Aime Maggie, she
has 4.4k subscribers, and she makes what she calls 'unsolicited environmental commentary',
great stuff about sustainability, veganism. She is an American living in Paris, so
there's some interesting stuff going on there. I recommend her video 'Your YouTube Fave Is
Killing The Planet'. It's basically about the wastefulness of a lot of trends on YouTube, and I
know a lot of you are into these sorts of topics, so I'm sure you're gonna enjoy it. Go check
out Aime's channel, give her some love! One of you sent me this channel on Instagram,
I think, and the channel name is Mary McGillivray! She has 1.8k subscribers right
now. She has a few very fascinating videos. The first one I watched is 'Harry Potter,
From European Gothic to Trump's F**cism', and it's examining the aesthetics and the
architecture, and how those tie into history, and the political implications in the Harry
Potter movies, which is a fascinating combination, and I learned a lot of great stuff from that
video. So, please go check out Mary's channel! Thank you guys so much, I appreciate that you
support the shout-outs that I give, because again, these creators are awesome, they deserve to
have more eyes on their wonderful content, and it brings me joy to introduce you
to maybe some new internet friends, or at least some new parasocial relationships.
Alright, that's all, thank you so much! I'm just gonna go, um, promote
some lights on Twitter! Once again, thank you Likewise for
sponsoring this video. if you want to download, follow me on there, get some great
recommendations... link in the description! k thanks bye!
