Of course, there were far fewer reviews available, companies still gamed reviewers/magazines but in different ways, and there was sometimes outright fraud around benchmarks, etc.
They’re still quite strong.
(Youtube/Blog) Reviewers get blacklisted by companies by not providing a positive review about a product they were given. As they rely on scooping type style reviews, this means they not only don't get a free product to review, but they can't review it until after it's for sale instead of being able to 'preview' it for people and get more clicks that way.
The "gotta have everything day one (or earlier!) to be cool!" is the most successful piece of meta-marketing imaginable.
They do use affiliate links, so they have incentive to want you to buy _something_, but no incentive to give any particular brand or model a biased review.
When it's seller specific affiliate programs? It's all just spam basically.
The vast majority of publications fund “reviews” in different ways.
Some publications you can pay to have your product “featured” in.
In some others, companies give a reviewer who has a reputation for favorable reviews free products. The unspoken expectation is that the reviews will drive sales and that the free product (and free content) train keeps going.
And yet others have serious conflicts of interest with their supporting advertisers.
In an industry I was in, the trade publication gave the "product of the year" award to whoever bought the most advertisements in the magazine.
(holding up the magazine cover) "I'd like to thank you for creating X magazine's product of the year!"
>he paused for a moment<
"Which is awarded to the highest ad-spend of the magazine for the year."
Absolute comedy, and a wonderfully satirical human being.
They got a guitar or synth that was bad? They would just tell the manufacturer they would rather not say something bad.
Of course, after a while readers started asking questions, so the answer was to review products from companies not advertising in the magazines.
Customers asked "why aren't there any review saying a product is bad", so they started doing that with products whose manufacturers didn't advertise there or didn't give free stuff for review. They'd borrow, or buy a few Danelectro or Behringer pedals for $30 dollars just to make a bad review and "save face" to readers.
Basically they got "token bad products" to save face.
A decade plus ago I worked alongside a team of writers, and they always kept alcohol in their desks. I totally understand why now.
You definitely need a bottle for when you get some terrible product and you know the manufacturer won't like that it won't get reviewed.
Funny enough, the situation is even worse now: with YouTube reviewers, there's no more expectation of neutrality as with professional journalists in the past. So all quality reviews are praising products.
such magazines had massive conflicts of interest and could not be trusted in the first place.