It is probably time to hold these financial "influencers" accountable for their Shill as a Service business models. Formalize and codify their responsibility for paid promotions.
In the words of the great legal scholar Eddie Murphy, "There's gonna be consequences and repercussions."
And as the great Izabella Kaminska puts it regarding scribes: "Is It Time To Mark Journalists to Market?"
From MarketWatch, November 22:
YouTube finance gurus who had sponsorship deals with FTX have come under fierce criticism online. The gurus say they were duped like everyone else. Erika Kullberg has been held up as a poster child of a millennial who quit a demanding career to make money as a financial influencer. Shortly after ditching her corporate law gig about three years ago, she started talking about “making $100,000 per year on YouTube.”
As part of her work, Kullberg cofounded Creators Agency, a small talent management firm and digital ad network aimed at helping other “influencers scale their businesses and connect with relevant brands.” One of the brands Creators Agency helped promote was failed crypto exchange FTX.
For the group of popular self-styled YouTube finance gurus Creators Agency represented, the sponsorship deals to promote FTX to their millions of followers were highly lucrative.
Kevin Paffrath, a 30-year-old YouTube star with 1.85 million followers to his real estate and financial tip page Meet Kevin, says he was paid $2,500 every time he mentioned FTX in one of his videos. And he believes he had one of the smaller deals with the crypto exchange; others have claimed six-figure deals with the firm.
“If I could go back in time, I would undo it all in a heartbeat. We failed here,” Paffrath said by phone from a cruise with his family. “Everybody was fooled.”
Paffrath and other prominent finance influencers have posted apology videos and scrubbed their YouTube channels of clips in which they sang the praises of the company and its 30-year-old boy wonder founder, Sam Bankman-Fried. Paffrath says his FTX deal only made up about 3% of his total income in the last year.
Despite the mea culpas, criticism from the online investment community has been scathing , with some pointing to earlier videos in which finance gurus showed off multi-million dollar homes they said they bought, in part, with ad revenue brought in through their YouTube pages....
....MUCH MORE
