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Comment by hi_im_miles | Hacker News Reader

Trust is the biggest thing missing from most forms of advertisement. I know I will gladly check out a product that a YouTuber I enjoy recommends, but banner ads/prerolls/TV ads/etc feel like a scam reel.

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This is huge. There's a YouTuber I've been following for a stupidly long time, and if he recommends something, or even is sponsored by someone, I'll check them out. Same thing with acoup.blog - if there's a book recommendation there, I'll check it out in a heartbeat. Why? Because they've spent a long time developing trust with their audience. The YouTuber has been absolutely brutal about products, and has been extremely open about how people have tried to influence him one way or another when he's doing reviews. The author of acoup.blog has similarly put a lot of work in establishing his bonafides, so when he says a work is good or important, I know what he means by that.

I trust YouTubers (or whatever celebrity) even less than banner ads.

I know a pharmacist on Instagram that quit being a pharmacist and started hawking health supplements in between semi useful posts, mixing bullshit with truth and trashing the credibility of their qualifications.

I'll trust a product that a youtuber I like organically recommends. But I'd still not trust anything they "recommend" in a sponsored ad slot.

The only way you can (legally) pay for the former as a business is indirectly, via investing money into making a decent product rather than advertising.

There's a fun model I built once upon the level of monetization versus trust building activities a given YouTuber/influencer should do maximize monetization over any given time period. You can model the decay in audience trust per monetization.

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