TotalBiscuit promises full disclosure

Prominent YouTuber John ‘TotalBiscuit’ Bain has said that he will fully disclose when he is being paid to promote a game in future.

From now on we’ll be clearly disclosing promotional videos in a splash screen at the start of the video,” he tweeted. If the audience trusts you, you should also be able to trust them.

The main problem with disclosing in descriptions is embedded videos don’t have them, neither do certain apps. The reality is, promo videos are going to happen and they cannot be stopped. We should be pushing for transparency and disclosure.”

The admission comes after over a quarter of high-profile YouTubers admitted to receiving payments for their coverage.

Bain also went on to comment on the recent introduction of midroll ads on a number of YouTubers’ Lets Play videos, including the likes of NorthernLion and other Machinima channels.

Midrolling should be up to the channel themselves and what they feel comfortable asking of their audience,” he added. Reasonable advertising is the fairest and most sustainable way to make sure the viewers don’t have to pay for the content and the creator gets paid for their work as well as YouTube being compensated for the use of its servers, staff and bandwidth.

Midrolls are a significant boost to earnings, though in doing so you are asking more of your audience in support and potentially encouraging the use of adblocking software for those who decide they don’t want to tolerate the interruptions.

Sane and reasonable ad-supported content is the way to go until YouTube elects to do some sort of ad-free subscription service, if they ever do.”