A Linguistic Analysis of Youtube's Endorsement-Based Affiliate

Home , Jack Black

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies

English Language and Literature Bc. Anna Havránková

“Let’s Talk About Today’s Sponsor” - a Linguistic Analysis of YouTube’s Endorsement-Based Affiliate Advertisements

Master’s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. 2020

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and

secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………..

Author’s signature

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my supervisor Mgr. Jan Chovanec, Ph.D. not only for his academic expertise and

valuable insights, but also for his unyielding patience with changing deadlines and his help with

organisational matters.

Table of Contents

1.Introduction ...... 1 1.1. Challenges and Limitations ...... 4 2. Genre and Structure ...... 5 2.1. What Is Affiliate Advertising ...... 5 2.2. Genre ...... 6 2.2.1. Genre of Advertising ...... 7 2.2.2. YouTube as a Genre ...... 9 2.2.3. Affiliate Advertising as a Genre ...... 20 2.3. Structure ...... 22 2.3.1. Co-Text ...... 23 2.3.2. Transitions ...... 29 2.3.3. Inner Structure ...... 37 2.4. Summary ...... 45 3. Participants and Their Interactions ...... 46 3.1 Participation Framework ...... 47 3.1.1. YouTube ...... 47 3.1.2. Production Format ...... 52 3.3. Parasocial Relationships ...... 59 3.3.1. YouTube and the Ideal Self ...... 60 3.4. Summary ...... 65 4.1. Positioning Theory ...... 67 4.1.1. Names and Referents ...... 70 4.2. Persuasion Strategies ...... 72 4.2.1. Theoretical Background ...... 73 4.2.2. Affiliate Advertising-Specific Classification ...... 74 4.3. Persuasion Goals ...... 82

4.3.1. Affiliate Persuasion Goals ...... 87 4.4. Summary ...... 89 5. Discussion and Conclusion ...... 90 6. Bibliography ...... 93 6.1. Primary Sources ...... 93 6.2. Secondary Sources ...... 96 7. Appendices ...... 101 7.1. Bhatia’s Rhetorical Moves ...... 101 7.2. Transition ...... 103 7.2.1. Transition Into the Segment ...... 103 7.2.2. Transition Out of the Segment ...... 107 7.3. Persuasion Strategies ...... 110 7.4. Promotion Types ...... 113 Abstract ...... 114 Abstrakt ...... 115

Figures

Figure 1: Levels of generic description ...... 7 Figure 2: YouTube's homepage genre categories ...... 10 Figure 3: Jack Black Is Incredible Funny Moments subscription box ...... 13 Figure 4: Jack Black Is Incredible Funny Moments comment section ...... 14 Figure 5: Hello, Jack Black here. subscription box ...... 15 Figure 6: Hello, Jack Black here. Comment section ...... 16 Figure 7: Juraj Stefanko channel ...... 18 Figure 8: JablinskiGames channel ...... 19 Figure 9: Position of ad in the video ...... 25 Figure 10: YouTube’s built-in disclosure system ...... 28 Figure 11: Transition into the ad ...... 30 Figure 12: Transition out of the ad ...... 31 Figure 13: In-video logo ...... 34 Figure 14: In-video hashtag ...... 34

Figure 15: Title card transition into the segment ...... 35 Figure 16: Title card transition out of the segment ...... 35 Figure 17 & 18: Subtle scene change ...... 36 Figure 19 & 20: Major scene change ...... 36 Figure 21 & 22: Footage type change ...... 36 Figure 23: usage of Bhatia’s rhetorical moves ...... 38 Figure 24: Average placement of Bhatia’s rhetorical moves ...... 40 Figure 25: Reply thread discussing the advertiser’s production input ...... 50 Figure 26: Dynel’s model augmented for affiliate advertising...... 52 Figure 27 - 40: Raid Shadow Legends ads comment section ...... 62 Figure 41: Rhetorical triangle ...... 74 Figure 42: Number of uses per persuasion strategy ...... 81 Figure 43: Number of occurrences of each persuasion type ...... 84 Figure 44: Number of persuasion types occurring per video ...... 85 Figure 45: ypes of promotion in a comment section ...... 86

Tables

Table 1: Placement of rhetorical moves in Skillshare advertisement ...... 40 Table 2: Placement of rhetorical moves in Raid Shadow Legends advertisement ...... 41 Table 3: Persuasion strategies and their position on the rhetorical triangle ...... 75 Table 4: Focus of ethos-based strategies ...... 75

Transcripts

Transcript 1: video on YouTube featuring Jack Black ...... 11 Transcript 10: ad with a low level of script personalisation ...... 42 Transcript 11: ad with a high level of script personalisation ...... 43 Transcript 12: Foregrounding production and reception roles of the advertiser ...... 49 Transcript 13: high level of admission of authorship and principality ...... 54 Transcript 14: mid level of admission of authorship and principality ...... 55 Transcript 15: low level of admission of authorship and principality ...... 57

Transcript 16: example of positioning and storyline ...... 68 Transcript 2: YouTube video featuring Jack Black ...... 14 Transcript 3: Hybridity of YouTube video and advertising genres ...... 21 Transcript 4: Disclosure disconnected from the ad ...... 26 Transcript 5: cliff-hanger transition in pre-roll position ...... 31 Transcript 6: cliff-hanger transition in mid-roll position ...... 32 Transcript 7: segue transition establishing connection of ad and content ...... 32 Transcript 8: comedic segue transition ...... 33 Transcript 9: verbal transition out of the ad closing a cliff-hanger ...... 33 Transcripts 17-21: examples of audience positioning through reference ...... 71-72 Transcripts 22-35: examples of persuasion strategies ...... 76-81

1. Introduction

Just like video killed the radio star, a favourite topic nowadays is how the online space is slowly taking over television. And to keep pace with the development, the online space is becoming a new home for not only entertainers, but also marketers. It is becoming less common for young people to own a TV and most of them know infomercial segments only from YouTube compilations and advertisement spots as interruptions necessary to enjoy free online videos. This change of landscape brings new angles to old challenges faced by the advertisers.

As Guy Cook observed even back in 1992, advertisement is an omnipresent genre that is often ignored by its audience - fliers are thrown out, recordings are fast-forwarded and newspaper advertising sections flicked through (2001: 1). And while it is becoming increasingly hard to keep the target audience’s attention, especially due to advert/banner blindness, the online landscape gives the viewer even more opportunities to avoid viewing ads by either offering a paid alternative to a service that comes ad-less (YouTube premium,

Spotify, mobile games), allowing them to skip the advert after a few seconds, or using a third- party software to block the banner ads permeating most page layouts. The decreased effectiveness of these free-standing ads then led to a wide spread of advertising strategies that more tightly interweave the advertisement with the content the audience actively seeks. One of these strategies is affiliate advertising, which is an innovative way for advertisers to avoid these phenomena by further emphasizing the hybridity of the genre and by employing many different creators within one campaign, generating a set of narrowly targeted instances of the same ad. All while still keeping their brand identity.

This thesis therefore aims to analyse the discourse of YouTube affiliate advertising, focusing on the genre, structure, participant framework and persuasion strategies. The preliminary hypothesis is, that affiliate ads are a hybrid genre and this hybridity is created by blending the non-promotional genres of the video content with the promotional genre of advertising and furthermore, that the influencers’ relatability and their relationship with their audiences plays a large role in their persuasion strategies.

The benefit of including affiliate advertising in research is that most analysed material tends to display advertisements that have been made at least semi-professionally by marketing teams. When it comes to advertising on social media in general, while online advertising and the language of persuasion have been a well-researched topic in linguistics, there is not enough research on influencer-produced advertising from the language point of view, even though it is being studied from sociological and marketing perspectives. Affiliations, sponsorships, or paid reviews share features with other types of online marketing, but they are also distinct enough that they should not be only presented under the umbrella of their mode.

While the marketers themselves obviously recognise the unique opportunities these strategies offer, linguistic publications often focus on the platforms’ modes of interaction that computer mediated communication offers. the potential of social media personalities and their relationships with their audiences being used as means for persuasion has therefore been mostly overlooked.

The data I have gathered to prove my hypotheses consists of 39 advertisements in both audio and video form collected from various YouTube channels during 2019 and 2020, featuring content that would be classified as different genres by the YouTube algorithm. The advertisements were commissioned by 20 companies offering different types of products and services, ranging from hair products to VPN subscriptions. While the main target of the

2 analysis are the advertising segments, the accompanying texts from the videos are used in the analysis in order to provide context.

As for theoretical background, I will create a framework from relevant sources from not only linguistics, but also sociology and marketing (Giltrow & Stein, 2009), to accommodate for the hybrid genre that is affiliate advertising and the cultural context necessary for accurate analysis. The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first explores genres that create the hybrid sub-genre of affiliate advertising and defines its features, contrasting them to traditional advertising as defined by Cook (2001) or Goddard (2002). The chapter then further explores the segment’s placement within the accompanying text and its inner structure based on the rhetorical moves developed by Bhatia (2005).

The second chapter is centred around participants and their interactions. It references

Goffman’s concepts of participation framework and production format (1981) and adapts the

YouTube framework devised by Dynel (2014) to fit affiliate advertising specifically. The chapter aims to showcase the different levels of the participant’s interactions and the role of influencer and affiliate as collaborative production parties. In this section I will also be using

YouTube videos as secondary sources to illustrate certain prevalent attitudes and opinions in the YouTube community from the inside perspective.

The last chapter analyses persuasive strategies of the advertiser and the influencer. By using the lens of the positioning theory (Harré & Slocum, 2003; Moghaddam and Harré,

2010) it examines which position the influencers construct for themselves and the other parties and what persuasive narrative this positioning creates. It then provides an analysis of a classification of persuasion strategies based on the rhetoric triangle (Freese, 1926; Cockroft &

Cockroft, 1992) as well as analysis of the influencers’ main persuasive goal.

1.1. Challenges and Limitations

The first challenge of the data collection was the personal bias of the collected data.

YouTube creates algorithms based on personal preferences and even with a conscious effort to branch out a large portion of the videos chosen reflects not only my personal interests, but also my gender or age, as according to their privacy policy (n.d.) Google collects information on their users and targets their recommendation based on this data. However, creating an anonymous profile does not entirely solve this bias as YouTube still uses geolocation based on the IP address and the algorithm favours to show new users certain type of content consistent with their ideal branding.

Furthermore, using non-personalised YouTube recommendations in form of the frontpage or the trending page resulted in other challenges in data collection, since only a fraction of YouTube videos contain affiliate advertising advertisement, but the ratio seems to be even lower in these recommended videos. YouTube does not publicly discuss the inner workings of their algorithm, but it has been alleged by the community that it heavily favours family friendly content and creators who upload often. This therefore logically leads to recommended channels having larger income from their ad revenue and being less likely to complement their revenue streams by affiliate deals and sponsorships. I am therefore acknowledging the fact that my data is implicitly biased.

The last possible limitation arises from some of the similarities in the texts and the influencers’ own admission that the advertisers provide some sort of script to their affiliates, I have contacted several companies regarding this script and have not received a copy to analyse, with one of the companies even denying the existence of such script.

2. Genre and Structure

Key steps to understanding how affiliate advertising functions is to define where it falls as a genre and what other genres influence it. This chapter will therefore explore what traditionally defines an advertisement and what genre is brought into the mix by the affiliate as an influencer using YouTube as a platform. It will then define affiliate advertising as a hybrid genre with two distinct communicative purposes.

Furthermore, affiliate advertising has more conventionalised structure than TV advertising and unlike TV advertising it interacts with the surrounding content. This chapter then also analyses the possible placement of the advertising segment within the video and the ways it interacts with the content, as well as the conventionalised inner structure of the advertising segment and its personalisation by the influencers.

2.1. What Is Affiliate Advertising

First step to analysing affiliate advertising is to define it as a business practice. This will help us reveal the participant’s intentions behind their linguistic behaviour. The basic principle of affiliate advertising is a business relationship between two brands, where the advertising company agrees to compensate the other participant with an already established following or customer base to promote their product or service to said following. When it comes to social media, it is however common to include a third side, an affiliate network that acts as an intermediary between the affiliate and the advertising company (Mathur,

Narayanan, & Chetty, 2018). The Network however does not participate in creating the final advertisement and acts only as a mediator between the influencer and the advertiser.

The affiliate is usually provided with their affiliate link or a code and they generate income per click or even per sale in some cases and therefore at least part of the commission the affiliate receives is “performance based”. Affiliate advertisement is therefore, unlike TV

5 spots or internet banner ads, focused directly on sales rather than awareness building

(Goldschmidt, Junghagen & Harris, 2003: 43-44).

Affiliate advertising is also usually not the sole way a company advertises but rather one part of a larger campaign. It is, however, in order to clarify that affiliate advertising does not focus only on hard-sales. Most subscription-based companies are offering free trials to users who sign up with an affiliate link. However, there is always a call for action involved, whether it is purchasing the product, clicking a link to learn more about it or signing up for a free trial, so they can never be described as simply raising brand awareness.

2.2. Genre

To explain the concept of affiliate advertising and how it differs from other sub-genres of advertisements or promotional texts, we must first define the concept of genre. The broadest definition from a linguistic perspective is that genre is a type of text. However, scholars differ on what characteristics of the text should influence the typology. The decisive properties could be communicative purpose (Bhatia, 2014), or the type or area of human activity that the text linguistically represents (Bakhtin, 1986; Fairclough, 1992: 126). Either way, genre studies focus on identifying a general structure of the text and often make use of lexical or grammatical analysis to establish prototypical commonalities (Bhatia, 1993). These commonalities are ultimately what allows us to recognise genre mixing and blending - we are able to recognise generic patterns prototypically used in persuasive communicative contexts mixed within a text that otherwise displays patterns seen in entertainment.

If we therefore consider shared communicative purpose as the decisive property in identifying genre, we would then be able to place affiliate advertising within Bhatia’s levels of generic description in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Levels of generic description (Bhatia, 2005: 5) In this model affiliate advertising would be on the same level as TV commercials or print advertisement, differing in its medium, but also sharing broader characteristics of the promotional genre of advertisement - defining the advertisement genre is therefore the first step to understanding affiliate advertising.

2.2.1. Genre of Advertising

Despite advertising being as omnipresent as it is in everyday life there is no consensus on what defines the genre. For the purpose of this thesis I will be using the functional approach to genre as defined by Bakhtin. From this point of view, advertising could be view as a tool for persuasion, which Virtainen and Halmari define as “all linguistic behaviour that attempts to either change the thinking or behaviour of an audience, or to strengthen its beliefs, should the audience already agree“ (2005: 3).

Some, however, view its purpose in more narrow terms. For instance, Ogilvy offers that advertising is simply “a medium of information” serving to convince a customer to purchase a product (1983). This sentiment also rings true with several other scholars, such as

Vestergaard and Schroder (1985).

However, other scholars have opted to define the genre in broader terms, which encompass all the intricacies that the advertising landscape offers apart its sales focus. Leech claims that advertising “aims to change the will, opinions, or attitudes of its audience (1966: 25),

Goddard then maintains that advertising operates on different levels, has to include the notion of audience reception and “is not just about the commercial promotion of branded products, but can also encompass the idea of texts whose intention is to enhance the image of an individual, group or organisation” (1998: 6). By contrast, Cook rejects the narrower definition, arguing that certain advertisements are devised to, for instance, seek support rather than promote a product, some, such as songs or poems have not been conceived with the intent to sell and have only gained this function through their secondary usage in marketing campaigns, and other adverts have undeniably recognisable functions apart from marketing, such as offering entertainment, warning or (mis)information and these functions are still relevant even after the product is no longer available (2001: 10).

Another approach is that advertising is not a unified genre. The discourse of advertising and promotion has colonized other genres and Bhatia theorizes that given today’s

“consumerism culture”, other genres display elements of promotion, while traditional advertising has moved from hard selling to more subtle territories, blurring the boundaries between the genres beyond the point of recognition (2005). Cook concludes his analysis by noting that ads are parasitic, “appropriating voices from other genre and having no independent existence”, they are “embedded in accompanying discourse” and “make extensive use of intertextual allusions, both to other ads and to other genres” (2010: 219-220).

Rather than advertising being a genre consisting of texts unified by their persuasive purpose, other genres with their own communicative purposes may serve as vehicles for persuasion

(Halmari & Virtanen, 2005: 230).

2.2.2. YouTube as a Genre YouTube is well known as a video-sharing platform. As such, it cannot be considered a genre - videos uploaded on the site have no common communicative purpose, format and do not encompass one area of human activity. YouTube itself offers classification of its content by grouping videos into rudimentary categories (Figure 2 bottom left), but these cannot be considered an accurate representation of genres appearing on the site. As Giltrow and Stein note, “Internet genres appear not to have the same obligatoriness and ritualized expectedness as non-Internet genres: this is meant by saying they are less ‘focussed’” (2009: 11) and even though social media sites like grouping their content into categories to make navigation easier for the users (Figure 2), is “imposed by design rather than emerging organically out of collective practice” (Burgess & Green, 2018: 8) and this grouping is therefore more rudimentary than in case of traditional media and cannot be considered a genre in the sense defined above.

Figure 2: YouTube's homepage genre categories

The classification is not entirely false, considering the genres often being viewed as forming hierarchical structures. Building upon Bhatia’s levels of generic description (Figure 1), the term itself is subordinate to genres defined by communicative purpose, mainly entertainment, education and description. These contain the proposed sub-genres of gaming, music, fashion etc., not fully encompassing the variety of YouTube content, but acknowledging the variety of communicative purposes and areas of human activity.

However, this rudimentary classification omits one important factor - the creator.

YouTube is a video-sharing platform, but it is also a social medium. There is an important distinction between videos simply uploaded on the platform but not specifically created for it, and what I will call a YouTube video for the purpose of this thesis. This distinction is important to delineate since affiliate advertising ads exclusively appear in YouTube videos and not other videos uploaded on the platform. While it is not reflected on the platform in any way, it is acknowledged by the users - that is why certain content uploaders are referred to as

YouTubers and therefore acknowledged as YouTube video creators, while others are not.

However, quantifying these universally understood differences is surprisingly difficult.

As Burgess & Green (2018: 6) point out, YouTube is a particularly unstable field of study, due to both its dynamic changes and its content diversity. There are several markers of a YouTube video. The first is the uploader’s role as a producer. The platform was first launched under the slogan “Broadcast Yourself” and user-generated content remains in its centre to this day (Johansson, 2020: 175). Furthermore, the content should be created for the

YouTube platform. While YouTube’s main content are the videos, they do not exist in a vacuum. They are integrated within the platform and its features, such as the description box, comment section and the like and dislike system. YouTubers acknowledge this and tailor their content to make use of the platform’s features. Lastly, YouTube is defined by its participatory culture, in which audiences are invited to interact with the content and participate in its creation and circulation (Jenkins, 2006: 290). The feature’s mentioned above are largely focused on user interaction and are tailored for “collaborative or collective participation”

(Burgess & Green, 2018: 6). YouTubers know this, they acknowledge their YouTube audiences and promote this participation.

To illustrate this point, let us consider two videos focusing on the same person as the main speaker - the American actor and comedian Jack Black (Transcript 1 and 2). From

YouTube’s perspective both of these videos would most likely belong in the entertainment category. However, there are differences that make the first one a YouTube video and the other simply a video on YouTube based on the criteria described above, which can be illustrated not only by the videos themselves, but their description boxes and accompanying comment sections.

First, let us look at the example that does not fulfil the YouTube video criteria.

Transcript 1: video on YouTube featuring Jack Black JB = Jack Black, G = guest, H = host JB: [getting up from a sofa in a TV studio] I'm on! I'll do it if you wanna do it! Let's do this! [pulls out a leather belt and starts spinning it around] G: [trying to stop him] Wait, wait, wait! H: [avoiding the belt] Jack, no! Wait! Stop! Guys!

(Stefanko, 2018, 0:00)

Transcript 1 is from a video titled Jack Black Is Incredible Funny Moments. It was not uploaded by Jack Black himself, but another YouTube user who compiled footage from various late-night shows and interviews. These clips were not made with the YouTube audience in mind - Jack black addresses either the interviewer or the studio audience (“I'm on!

I'll do it if you wanna do it! Let's do this!”). Not only is the YouTube audience not addressed, but they are also not offered a way to interact with the content of the video. While the uploader is a YouTube user, the content they uploaded does not pertain to their persona and they are more of an editor than a producer.

This is further reinforced by the subscription box and the comment section.

Figure 3: Jack Black Is Incredible Funny Moments subscription box (Stefanko, 2018)

Figure 4: Jack Black Is Incredible Funny Moments comment section (Stefanko, 2018)

While Figure 4 shows there are attempts to elicit audience participation and build a relationship with the user, there is no mention of them in the video itself and there is a disconnect between the way he addresses the audience and the comment section. None of the top comments are addressed to the YouTube user, they all talk about Jack Black.

To contrast, let us consider an example which fulfils all the criteria of a YouTube video.

Transcript 2: YouTube video featuring Jack Black [slowly turning on a chair towards the camera] Hey what's up, it's me, Jack Black. This is my new YouTube channel Jablinski. It’s gonna be bigger than Ninja, It's gonna be bigger than

PewDiePie. So what's Jablin, Jables, it’s Pewdiepie! [mimicking Pewdiepie’s voice and leaning back in the chair] (Black, 2018, 0:00)

In contrast, Transcript 2 is from a video titled Hello, Jack Black Here.. that was uploaded by Jack Black himself to his channel JablinskiGames. In this video Jack Black is positioned as the author. He speaks directly into the camera and directly mentions the intended platform (“my new YouTube channel”) as well as indirectly referencing it by mentioning some of the creators famous on it (“it's gonna be bigger than PewDiePie”). His engagement with the YouTube audience is also consistent in the subscription box and the comments.

Figure 5: Hello, Jack Black here. subscription box (Black, 2018)

Figure 6: Hello, Jack Black here. Comment section (Black, 2018)

The comment section (Figure 6) is formatted in a similar way as the one below the previous video (Figure 4), except there is one important difference. Here the “I” in “I am proud to announce” refers to Jack Black, who is also the focus of the video and who the audience engagement in the comment section is centred around, while in Figure 3 (“I Figured.

Why not reach for 100k”) it refers to Juraj Stefanko, who is the uploader, but not the focus of the video. Jack Black then also engages with the audience directly in the comment section

(Figure 5) by pinning a comment he authored and therefore giving the audience a way to directly address him. While he does not further respond to the audience and it could not be labelled as a conversation, it is none-the-less a form of two-sided interaction

In short - what separates a YouTube video from any other video is the YouTuber (a content producer using YouTube as social media) and their intent; the content is an inseparable combination of the creator and the platform. That is not to say that any video a

YouTuber uploads could be classified as a YouTube video under the previously described criteria - when the creator’s persona is not present in the video in some form, the audience primarily engages with the video’s content rather than the uploader, as we have seen in

Transcript 1. When the uploader is not a part of the content, they are therefore not in a position to give effective personal endorsements.

But there is still one important fact to consider. The influencer does not only create one isolated piece of content, but their persona is also the connective tissue of the entire channel, even if the content is otherwise inconsistent. If we come back to the two previously discussed videos and take a look at the channels, this feature of the genre becomes much more apparent.

Figure 7: Juraj Stefanko channel

Figure 8: JablinskiGames channel

Juraj Stefanko’s (Figure 7) is more consistent, with the celebrities changing, but the format of humorous clips from interviews staying the same. JablinskiGames (Figure 8) then offers a wider range of vlogs, reviews, announcements, gaming videos and collaboration with other creators. It is an example of internet genres being less focused. Even within one channel with one creator there is content YouTube’s genre system would classify into different categories.

These videos are, however, still unified by one common feature - Jack Black’s interaction with the audience. YouTube influencers do not only create the content, they are the content. That is why alongside communicative purposes specific to the video or the

19 creator that could be encompassed by the rudimentary YouTube classification, YouTube video as a genre is identified by one overarching communicative purpose - to build a parasocial relationship between the viewer and the influencer.

2.2.3. Affiliate Advertising as a Genre

As we have established earlier, affiliate advertising is a business relationship between two brands, where the advertising company agrees to compensate the other participant with an already established following or customer base to promote their product or service to said following. It therefore contains elements of promotional genre, but by being inserted within a

YouTube video and (co)produced by the influencer it also adopts the characteristics of the

YouTube video genre. After all, when discussing advertising, it was established that promotion is “parasitic”. This results in what Fairclough would call a hybrid genre (2003: 34).

Hybridity as such describes various forms of genre blending, mixing or combining - some authors do not speak of hybridity, but rather use terms such as recontextualization Linell

(1998) or integration of genres (Ravotas and Berkenkotter, 1998) in the same context.

However, all these terms describe processes which lead to one genre or text being incorporated into the other. This process can happen naturally even in non-scripted spoken conversation, but in case of affiliate advertising, it is by design.

Affiliate adverts are considered to be native advertising. Native advertisements are specifically designed to imitate the surrounding editorial content and appear to be designed by the publisher (Evans &Wojdynski, 2016). And as we have established above, the key element of the YouTube genre which affiliate advertising attempts to imitate is not necessarily the activity or topic portrayed in the video, but the persona of the influencer.

Despite the preliminary hypothesis that the advertisement will blend promotion and the content/genre of the video it is inserted in, the data confirms that the influencer’s persona

20 including their mannerisms and idiolect as well as an emphasis on relationship with their viewers are foregrounded more than the surrounding content. In fact, if tie-ins to content occur, they are usually at the very beginning of the advertising segment and function as a transition rather than being used for promotion of the product, as will be explored later in the chapter. The hybrid genre is therefore formed from advertising and the broader YouTube video genre, as Transcript 3 illustrates.

Transcript 3: Hybridity of YouTube video and advertising genres [switch from painting b-roll footage to facecam, slow zoom on the face] Heeeyy I'm back with my face in your face. Because this video is sponsored by Honey. So- So have you ever bought something online and then after the fact you realize [comedic voice modulation] oh snap I could have gotten that for less, but it's too late. And then the paranoia sets in. [dramatic music, black and white filter, nervously brushing hair] I could be overpaying for everything. Ha, ha. I'm an idiot. It's worse than a rainbow with only three colours. And those three colours are in the wrong order. [visual representation of the wrong rainbow, dramatic sound effects] Worse. Than that. Luckily I don't have to deal with that heartache anymore, thanks to Honey, the free browser extension that saves you time and money when you shop online. [shift from facecam to b-roll footage of the extension] honey scans the internet for discounts and coupon codes and then applies the one with the best savings to your cart. Wooow [comedic voice modulation, switch to facecam] So if you're a coupon code, you can't hide. Honey will find you. Yeah. [comedic zoom] Yeah. I do most of my shopping online, because it's easier. And I need to order a lot of supplies on a weekly basis. Acrylic paint, fabric paint, I just need a-a lot of paint. And it feels so good to see how much money you can save using Honey. [slow Zoom on a Honey account savings tab] That's a lot of money, honey. It's like [comedic voice modulation] sprinkles. Just amazing. So there's really no reason not to use Honey, it's free and installs on your computer in just two clicks. Get Honey for free at joinhoney.com/moriah. That's joinhoney.com/moriah and thank you to Honey for sponsoring this video [cocks head with comedic pop effect] Okay! Let's get back to painting. (Elizabeth, 2019, 6:28)

The ad from Transcript 5 appears in a video titled Thrift Store Makeover #5 centred around repainting thrifted items. The channel as a whole is focused on arts and crafts. While

Transcript 5 involves some mentions of supplies used in the video (“I need to order a lot of supplies on a weekly basis acrylic paint fabric paint I just need a lot of paint”), it is not tailored to it and could as well be uploaded to any other video on the channel. It is rather centred around the persona of the influencer as an artist being known to prefer certain

21 aesthetics (“it's worse than a rainbow with only three colours and those three colours are in the wrong order”, “it's like sprinkles, just amazing”). The influencer’s lexical choices are also reminiscent of the rest of her content, she does not censor profanity or switch to formal language (“oh I'm an idiot”, “so if you're a coupon code you can't hide, honey we'll find you yeah”). The accompanying footage does not feature any of the crafts from the rest of the video but it is edited in the same comedic style the influencer uses for her non-advertising content, using voice modulation, sound effects and camera zooms. Given all these features the advertisement may be separable from the content but it is inseparable from the influencer.

Even if the accompanying video was not about arts and crafts, it would still make sense provided it would be presented by the same influencer. However, the same is true about the audience - it is targeted towards people who are familiar with the influencer’s persona.

This proves that in its hybridity the affiliate advertising genre has adopted both the communicative purpose of advertising and of YouTube videos, its main features being endorsement and parasocial relationships between the audience and the influencer, rather than being a blend of endorsement and the video’s content, as I have previously hypothesized.

However, this still confirms that affiliate advertising creates a narrowly targeted instance of an ad tailored to a specific audience.

2.3. Structure

Being native advertising, affiliate ads are designed to blend with the surrounding text.

However, unlike in the 50’s when they were first emerging (Pophal, 2014), advertisements must now be properly disclosed and cannot be overtly misleading about their nature. For this reason, it is in order to explore how the influencers navigate the challenge of associating the two texts without having them merge together.

Furthermore, affiliate advertising, being prevalent on social media, has been conventionalised to the point where there are indications of a common structure. Unlike TV advertising, which is more diverse and experimental with different forms and narratives, affiliate advertising has a more defined inner structure designed to make sure compulsory points are mentioned allow the influencer to follow the script with an optional level of personification, which remains identifiable even in ads taking the form of for instance a skit.

This chapter will therefore explore the structure of both the YouTube videos and the ads themselves, highlight the conventions of the genre as well as the level to which they are adapted by individual influencers, showcasing the hybridity of affiliate advertising not only on the level of a genre, but on the level of a text as well.

2.3.1. Co-Text Most forms of advertisements hardly ever interact with the content around them. TV spots and banner ads are usually made to be arbitrarily inserted into whatever place is reserved for them and are shown to audiences on a massive scale, such as video ads being inserted between various TV programmes and in videos on various streaming platforms.

However, YouTube’s affiliate ads are only ever presented in a single video by a specific creator or creators, which, unlike with many other forms of ads, renders their co-text important. On one hand, this offers the influencer an option to tie the advertisement not only to their brand but to a specific point in the video, creating a connection, but on the other hand, this also complicates separating the two for the purpose of paid promotion disclosure. While the previous chapter has proven that the video’s content is not the main focus in creating the ad itself, the segment is often framed by transitions in and out of the main video content that serve as connecting pieces. These transitions, while not being promotion-focused, allow the two texts to show connection to each other while not creating a single unified whole.

2.3.1.1. Placement of Advertisement in the Video

In order to aid the separation of the ad and the video its placement is highly conventionalized. There are three places to insert advertisement within non-advertising content - beginning, middle or end. In the context of affiliate advertising these are called pre- roll, mid-roll and post-roll ads (Ismail, 2020). It is, however, worth noting that pre-rolls and post-rolls rarely open or close the entire video. They are usually inserted in separate blocks not constituting the main content, amidst such things as the channel intro, teasers from later on in the video, merchandise promotion, tour announcements etc. Midrolls then interrupt the actual content, similarly to TV or radio ad breaks and are usually inserted either in places where natural structure breaks occur, such as between chapters or in a tense moment in the video.

None of the positions is exceptionally preferred compared to the others, however, pre- rolls and mid-rolls are slightly more common than post-rolls (Figure 9), possibly to avoid the audience skipping the end of the video after having already watched the main content, which one of the influencers in my data acknowledges as a common practice (Mumbo Jumbo, 2020,

05:18)

Figure 9: Position of ad in the video

It is not uncommon to mention the product in more than one position. If the ad is not pre-roll, it is a common practice to mention the advertiser at the beginning in a form of a short disclosure. It is also a common practice to do the same at the end if the ad is not post-roll, once again thanking the advertiser for their involvement. These instances were, however, not counted as separate ad instances and only the position of the main advertising segment was taken into account.

Upon analysing these three groups, I have concluded that the position of the advertising segment does not influence its length, inner structure, or the transitions in and out of it. The information that the pre-roll and post-roll advertising segments are often grouped in with other content is however important in the last chapter.

2.3.1.2. Separation From Co-Text

As previously mentioned, native advertising is not allowed to be blended with editorial content without the viewers being aware of its promotional nature. This is because YouTube is owned by Google LLC, which is a company based in the USA, and online marketing and social media endorsements on the platform are therefore regulated by the Federal Trade

Commission. All advertising must be appropriately disclosed (Guides Concerning Use of

Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising, 2009, § 255) and for this reason the influencers use several strategies to demonstrate that they are transitioning from their main content into the advertisement.

2.3.1.3. Disclosures

The text ensuring adherence to the FTC guidelines takes a form of a disclosure. It is a written or spoken statement before the advertising segment begins where the influencer overtly informs the audience that what follows is of promotional nature and that they are receiving provisions for this promotion. The disclosure does not need to precede the advertising segment without interruption; in case of mid-rolls or post-rolls it can occur at the beginning of the video or in written form in the description

Transcript 4: Disclosure disconnected from the ad [Talking into the camera] I used to be like you. I used to live paycheck to paycheck. I used to split the flavor packets of my ramen in half to make them last longer. Now? I use the whole packet. I’m my own boss! I make my own hours, I work from home. Which gives me plenty of time with the kiddos. So how would you like to join this amazing journey with me? [Animated channel intro followed by a Skillshare title card] This video was brought to you by Skillshare. [switch back to facecam] You’ve been hearing about MLMs a lot recently. They’ve been around for over a hundred years, the company that would eventually be known as Avon started in 1886. (Knowing Better, 2019, 00:09)

For instance, in Transcript 4 we see the disclaimer in a pre-roll position inserted between an introduction designed to entice the viewer “I used to be like you. I used to live

26 paycheck to paycheck” and the main content of the video (“the company that would eventually be known as Avon started in 1886”). The advertising segment itself is then a post- roll presented after the main section of the video.

One form of disclosure is a built-in feature of the YouTube platform to mark the video as including paid promotion. In this case a tag will appear in the left bottom corner when the video is played (Figure 10), even when it is not started from the beginning, and it remains on the screen for the first approximately 10 seconds. However, this tag cannot be personalised and cannot appear when the segment begins or display the advertiser’s name. In the dataset it is only used in 5 out of 39 cases and it is never the sole disclosure strategy.

All of the videos therefore contain a disclosure personalised by the influencer. Unlike the YouTube tag, they do not use the term paid promotion but are rather framing the advertiser as a sponsor. Some form of the word sponsor appears in all the ads but 4; two of those opt for “this video was brought to you by”, one discloses receiving commission by informing the viewers that the more they sign up for the service, the more content the influencers will be able to make and the last one uses the term ad. While I will explain later why the term sponsor may be problematic in this context, it nevertheless serves as an admission that the influencer has received compensation and will therefore be counted as a form of disclosure, without attempting to determine its effectiveness. Determining an effectivity of this disclosure would require an audience survey, which is outside the scope of this thesis.

Figure 10: YouTube’s built-in disclosure system (Sauce Stache, 2019) The disclosure is usually preceded or accompanied by the other strategies mentioned below, such as a scene change, a segue or similar cues alerting the viewer to the separation of the two parts and helping to delineate the boundaries of the advertising segment, however, while the other strategies differ, a disclosure of some sort is present in every single video in the dataset.

This result may be surprising, since there is a public debate around non-disclosure of advertisements on social media. However, affiliate advertising is only one subgenre of promotion on social media. For instance, a study by Marthur, Narayanan and Chetty examined sponsorship disclosures on YouTube and Pinterest (2018) and found that only about

10% of the affiliate ads in their dataset included any disclosure at all. The study does, however, not differentiate between endorsement of products received in PR, sponsorships, and affiliate advertising. Furthermore, the study’s dataset was compiled by extracting affiliate

URLs from video description, which in itself is not a guarantee that the video contains a dedicated advertisement segment, since many influencers tend to leave all their affiliate codes in their descriptions, without ever mentioning or using the product in that particular video.

While the specific instance of an affiliate advertisement is tailored to a specific video, the

28 affiliate link is not and can be shared regardless of the context in which it was originally acquired.

When there is an affiliate ad present in the video, it is partially scripted and disclosures are an integral part of its conventional structure, as I illustrate below when exploring the internal structure of the segment. While I do not doubt that there are undisclosed affiliations on the platform, the nature of affiliate advertising and the need to promote the affiliation link to receive commission would make it difficult for undisclosed endorsements to remain concealed. The presence of a disclosure in affiliate advertising will therefore be counted as an appropriate form of disclosure and non-recognition of advertising content by the viewer cannot be considered as one of the intended persuasion strategies.

2.3.2. Transitions

While disclosures declare the promotional nature of the advertising segment, they do not always aid with the transition of the two texts. This function is performed by transition cues. They do not only precede the advertising segment as disclosures do, but they are also used to transition out of the advertisement and delineate both boundaries of the segment.

While the forms and modes of these transitions vary, they are almost always present both opening and closing the segment, the only exception being two cases where the ad closes the entire video and a transition is therefore not needed (Figure 12).

These transitions could be divided into verbal and visual. No one form is favoured to the other - in fact, they are often used concurrently to aid in the separation of the two texts.

(Figures 11 and 12)

Figure 11: Transition into the ad

Figure 12: Transition out of the ad

2.3.2.1. Verbal Transitions

Verbal transition cues into the ad segment come in two distinct variants, which are distributed evenly within the dataset with 13 instances of each. The first one is a hard transition that serves to telegraph a change of topic without establishing a connection. These could also be called cliff-hangers, which is a strategy that leaves a plot unresolved to create suspense, because they are only used in pre-rolls and mid-rolls and are inserted after a video introduction or before an important plot point, delaying the viewer in seeing the main content resolved.

Transcript 5: cliff-hanger transition in pre-roll position

This week on my channel we're dealing with a lot of crazy folks. Crazy behaviour, crazy lawsuits, the crazy people who are out to hurt others. It's not cool man. My new one hour-long, yeah, you heard that right, Onision video is about to drop very soon, but before we begin any further in this video, special thanks to our incredible sponsor today, and i mean incredible sponsor, RayCon. [Violently shaking head from side to side] If you notice something, the earbuds in my ears, are not flying out! It's incredible. (Repzion, 2019, 0:08)

Transcript 6: cliff-hanger transition in mid-roll position You could also pop out the pans and replace them with your own paints. These are my Schmincke paints, because they're standard size palettes, they fit great. So that's kind of my little uhh DIY for ya, this is like a two-in-one kind of video. And before I go into kind of my review of these paints, I do want to take a moment and thank the sponsor of this video. The sponsor of this video is Skillshare, so thank you so much, Skillshare. (HulloAlice, 2020, 3:35)

We can see examples of this in Transcripts 5 and 6. The transitioning phrase in 5 (“but before we begin any further in this video”) delays the start of the main content after the introduction, while in 6 it serves as an interruption between the influencer showing a product and reviewing it.

The second, softer verbal transition strategy into the ad are then segues, which are statements that serve to transition between two topics without interruption. They are less intrusive than the cliff-hanger since they can establish a connection between the video and the advertisements while still clearly telegraphing the transition of topic. We can see an example of this in Transcript 7 with the influencer linking the video about fashion hacks with an advertiser that is an online second-hand clothes store. Before she ever mentions that it is an advertising segment, she transitions by establishing a connection (“in order to test out these clothing hacks and just bring some new life into my wardrobe, I ordered some new-to-me clothes from ThredUP”).

Transcript 7: segue transition establishing connection of ad and content So we're gonna test these clothing hacks out today and see which ones actually work, and which ones are just not it. And in order to test out these clothing hacks and just bring some new life into my wardrobe, I ordered some new-to-me clothes from

ThredUP. Snd ThredUP is actually the sponsor of this video, so thank you ThredUP, and I have a code for you guys.

(Schultzzie, 2020, 00:50)

However, establishing connection cannot be regarded as the sole purpose behind the usage of segues. The connection is often clearly hyperbolic and formed by the influencer finding an arbitrary commonality within their current topic and the product, either linking them with a colloquial question or by a sequence of associations. The arbitrariness of the connection between the two topics is intentionally jarring and the technique is therefore clearly used for comedic purpose, as we can see in Transcript 8, where the only connection between the current topic and the sponsor is the influencer’s lack of remorse.

Transcript 8: comedic segue transition Alright lads welcome back to my channel. If you are new here, my name is Tom Harlock and I do not have an intro, but I do have a god complex. And I will never apologize for it. A list of other things that I will never apologize for includes, but is not limited to, bullying you if you deserve it, saying things purely for attention, and being sponsored by Skillshare. Now that's what I call a fuckin segue. Today's video is sponsored by Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community with over 25,000 courses and classes in filmmaking graphic design, illustration photography and so much more. (Harlock, 2019, 00:14)

As for verbal transitions out of the ad, the inner structure of the ad usually telegraphs the end of the segment clearly enough that a pause and pragmatic marker is enough to transition out of the segment. They are still widely used, but they do not take the form of segues. However, they do sometimes complete the cliff-hanger such as in Transcript 9, where the ad and the main content are linked with both a cliff-hanger closure (and now back to the video”) and a pragmatic marker signalling a change of topic (“so”)

Transcript 9: verbal transition out of the ad closing a cliff-hanger Unlike Gmail Proton mail will never sell your data to advertisers, so unless you want me to keep reading embarrassing things in your emails, like for example that you've got an audiobook of 50 Shades of Gray, really click the link in the description to enjoy a truly secure way to send emails. Get it on Android, iOS or PC. And now back to the

video. So, how do we beat the grass from In the Tall Grass? As you may expect, a movie with such a unique premise deserves a solution that is equally unique. (Film Herald, 2019, 8:37)

2.3.2.2. Visual Transitions

Visual cues are then more varied than the verbal ones, since they can take advantage of camera angles, scene change, change of the footage type or insert visual cues, such as logos, into the current layout. Unlike with verbal cues, more than one visual cue is usually used and they are therefore harder to both categorise and quantify. They are, however, always used in case of mid-rolls and post-rolls when transitioning into the segment and the only cases where the transitions are purely verbal are in pre-rolls, where they are not transitioning between the ad and the main content, but rather between different parts of the introduction.

The insertion of a logo even by creators with less complex editing styles in one form or another is so consistent that it may be a requirement by some advertisers.

The most effective strategy is to insert a logo of the sponsor on the screen for either the beginning or the whole duration of the segment or to including a hashtag #ad or

#sponsored. This acts as both transition and disclosure and if the logo is kept on the screen for the whole duration, its disappearance then acts as t transition out of the segment as well

(Figures 13 and 14)

Figure 13: In-video logo (Hawkinson 2020) Figure 14: In-video hashtag (Logdotzip 2019)

A similar strategy is then a title card containing the logo or a disclosure. The difference is that in the previous strategy the text is inserted into the shot while a title card interrupts the shot or is inserted between two different ones. Unlike the logo or hashtag, the title card only stays on the screen for a few seconds. They do not only transition into the segment (Figure 15) but may also be used to transition out of it with a title card pertaining to the main content (Figure 16).

Figure 15: Title card transition into the segment (Mango Figure 16: Title card transition out of the segment Street, 2019) (Mango Street, 2019) Other types of visual transitions then utilise either the camera angle or a footage type to differentiate the ad from the rest of the content as if transitioning to a different scene, akin to a

TV ad spot interrupting a TV show. These changes of scenery vary widely, but can for instance include a switch from gameplay or b-roll footage to a face-cam to simulate a closer relationship, change from a face-cam to b-roll footage to showcase the product, change of camera angle, location, or the influencer’s clothing, etc. This change can be subtle, possibly attributed to the advertisement footage being added later rather than an intentional segment division (Figures 17 and 18 ) or it can be major, intentionally dividing the advertisement segment by entirely different editing style (Figures 19 and 20) or major change of footage type (Figures 21 and 22). The major change is usually present in videos with overall higher production value and does not occur with influencers using a single camera shot the entire video, but rather with ones whose videos are already highly produced.

Figure 17 & 18: Subtle scene change (Lauren, 2019)

Figure 19 & 20: Major scene change (RoomieOfficial, 2019)

Figure 21 & 22: Footage type change (Mumbo Jumbo, 2020) Between both verbal and visual cues the advertisement’s boundaries are therefore always clearly identifiable and the product or service is not mentioned outside of these delimited boundaries.

2.3.3. Inner Structure

Now that I have illustrated the outer structure of the segment’s insertion within its co- text, we can explore the structure of the segment itself.

Due to the mentioned sales focus the affiliates should be inclined to take a more sales- oriented approach while the TV spots are built to raise brand awareness. For instance, if we compare a TV spot from one of the most prolific affiliate marketers SquareSpace, there is a clear difference in persuasion strategies when it comes to one of their TV spots (SquareSpace,

2019, 2020) and an ad from one of their affiliates (Lauren, 2019, 35:54; ImAllexx, 2019,

0:05). While the TV spots are tickle ads, providing little to no information about the service apart from its name and the fact that it could be used to create a website, the affiliate ads always feature reason-oriented selling points and focus on providing more detailed information, including addressing the user’s possible fears (talking about customer service and templates looking professional despite being pre-made), explaining why everyone should be interested in the service and providing a quick and easy way to sign up. This shows how the company divides their marketing strategies into creating impressions by their TV spots and then focusing on sales through their affiliates, utilising the interactive aspect of social media.

To describe generic structure of an advertisement, Bhatia suggests ten rhetorical moves that are commonly used within its sub-genres: headlines, targeting the market

(targeting), justifying the product or service by establishing a niche (justification), detailing the product or service (detailing), establishing credentials (credentials), endorsement or testimonials (endorsement), offering incentives (incentive), using pressure tactics (pressure), soliciting response (response) and signature line and logo (2005: 214).

Bhatia’s rhetorical moves serve as a good basis for establishing commonalities in a generic structure of affiliate ads. Upon disregarding headlines and signature lines that were

37 already discussed as transition techniques, we can see that all the mentioned rhetorical moves are being used in affiliate ads to at least some degree.

Figure 23: usage of Bhatia’s rhetorical moves (2005: 214) in affiliate ads

As Figure 23 suggests, the most used move is detailing, followed by incentive and response. The fact that endorsement is only used in about 70% of cases when the genre is so heavily reliant on the influencer’s persona is an unexpected result. However, it further highlights that affiliate ads are primarily reason ads, not tickle, and they are also focused on sales or audience response. It, however, also proves that the degree to which the influencer employs these hard sell tactics is up to them. There were still influencers in the dataset who opted to include neither the incentive nor the call for response.

Which moves are the least used is then a slightly more complicated matter - the data would suggest that targeting the market and justifying the product or service by establishing a niche are uncommon, but I would argue that they are complementary and they typically occur in an either/or relationship. It is very rare that there is both or neither and it mostly depends on

38 the type of product - with more narrowly targeted ones such as eco-friendly shampoo the influencers point out the niche, while with products that have a broader use, such as a VPN, they target broader audience with “has this ever happened to you” scenarios and similar tactics. At least one of them appears in 77% of cases. The truly least common moves are then establishing credentials and using pressure tactics. Establishing credentials seems to be largely dependent on the script. For instance, Honey advertisements do not include this move at all, while Squarespace advertisements all do. Pressure tactics are up to the influencer and since affiliate advertising is based on a positive parasocial relationship with the viewer, it is understandable that the majority of influencers would opt out of threatening their audience’s face by employing them.

As for a placement of these moves within the ad, there is no single preferred way to order them. However, the generic sequence is illustrated by Figure 24 and there are certain trends to be inferred. While the placement of the first four moves is very close and they only differ by a slight margin, incentive, pressure, and response usually appear in the final portion after the product is properly introduced. In fact, the sequence of incentive and response seems to be a conventionalised way to end affiliate ads, usually taking the form of establishing the advertiser’s offer and then presenting the audience with the affiliate link.

Figure 24: Average placement of Bhatia’s rhetorical moves (2005: 214)in affiliate ads. Numbers represent a relative position of the move.

Another angle to consider is the generic structure of the ad being influenced by the advertiser’s script. Even with limited datasets for each company, we can see in Tables 1 and 2 how the advertisements from the same companies tend to share structural commonalities.

Justifi- Endorse- Channel Sponsor Targeting cation Detailing Credentials ment Incentive Pressure Response

Knowing Better Skillshare 3 1 2 x x 4 x x

Tom Harlock Skillshare 3 x 1 4 2 5 x x

Sauce Stache Skillshare x x 1 x 2 x 4 3

Sarah Hawkinson Skillshare 2 x 1 x 3 5 4 6 Hullo Alice Skillshare 3 x 1 x 2 4 x 5 Table 1: placement of rhetorical moves in Skillshare advertisement (numbers denote order of move in the text

Justifi- Endorse- Channel Sponsor Targeting cation Detailing Credentials ment Incentive Pressure Response

Danny Raid Shadow Gonzales Legends x x 2 1 x 3 5 4

Ready to Raid Shadow glare Legends x x 1 x 2 4 x 3

Pyrocynica Raid Shadow l Legends x x 1 x 2 4 x 3

Raid Shadow Logdotzip Legends x x 3 2 1 4 x 5 Table 2: placement of rhetorical moves in Raid Shadow Legends advertisement (numbers denote order of move in the text) In Table 1 we can see that Skillshare ads almost all include targeting and the conventional ordering of the first three moves is rather clearly given as detailing, endorsement and then targeting. Raid Shadow Legend ads (Table 2) then share the commonality of including neither targeting nor justification. However, despite this the segments are not identical, there are clear distinctions between the ad instances even with common script.

This proves that while there is a conventionalised form of an affiliate ad with preferred rhetorical moves and their suggested order, the influencers are allowed to personalise the segment to at least some extent.

2.3.3.1. Personalisation of Inner Structure

Another aspect of personalisation is the moves not being clearly defined and often spreading across longer stretches of text, being repeated, backtracked to etc. Given that most influencers are not professional marketers, even if the script was designed by a marketing team, the level of personalisation may interfere with its structural clarity.

The overall trend is that the easier these moves are to be clearly separated and identified, the less personalised the advertisement is and therefore the influencer is more likely to have been following the script. The following two ads can illustrate how these structural differences look in practice.

Transcript 10: ad with a low level of script personalisation Hey. This portion of the video is sponsored by Norton 360. A global leader in cyber safety. Norton 360 comes with multiple layers of protection for your devices. Not just antivirus and anti-spyware, but also things like dark web monitoring powered by LifeLock This software monitors the dark web for uses of your personal information. Now of course, no one can prevent all cybercrime but it's important to take a multi-layered approach to protection because cyber threats are constantly evolving. That's why Norton 360 also comes with a virtual private network or VPN. A VPN creates a private encrypted data tunnel that helps prevent cyber criminals from hacking into your Wi-Fi and intercepting the data you are sending and receiving. This is particularly useful when you're using public Wi-Fi. I like to use it when I'm traveling. So when I'm connecting to Wi-Fi in hotels or airports or coffee shops, it just gives me that extra peace of mind. Right now you can get up to 60% off by using promo code veritasium or by clicking the link in the description. Now Norton 360 has graciously given me Norton 360 deluxe to try out for myself and I'm really enjoying it. So I want to thank Norton 360 for sponsoring this portion of the video and I want to thank you for watching. (Veritasium,2020, 18:46)

The ad in Transcript 10 has a very clearly defined structure. The influencer starts with establishing credentials by the phrase “global leader in cybersecurity”. He then continues by detailing product features (“multiple layers of protection for your devices”), followed by justification of the product (“of course no one can prevent all cybercrime but it's important to take a multi-layered approach to protection”). The following section (“ helps prevent cyber criminals from hacking into your Wi-Fi and intercepting the data you are sending”) could then be understood as a pressure tactic, as it heavily insinuates that until the consumer starts using the product, they are vulnerable to getting their data stolen. The segment then ends with clear endorsement (“ I like to use it when I'm traveling”) and finally a combination of incentive and soliciting response (“you can get up to 60% off by using promo code veritasium”). Overall, the whole segment is concise and clearly structured and all the information shared has a purpose and can be attributed to one of Bhatia’s rhetorical moves without any unattributable redundancies. On the other hand, by staying concise and following the script, the only personalised information identifying the influencer is his affiliate code.

But if we consider a more personalised advertisement for a similar product, the structure becomes fuzzier.

Transcript 11: ad with a high level of script personalisation Before we get to the video I just want to thank Nord VPN for sponsoring this video, uh, if you guys don't know monetization is a little bit of an iffy situation, it's sometimes great and sometimes not so great, so I'm glad there are companies that are willing to help us in a time of need. I have a great deal for you guys that you don't miss out on. Go on nordvpn.com/angelikaoles to get 70% off of a three year plan with one month free. (?) a VPN, one helps to protect you, for example when you're using public Wi-Fi you can be in a cafe, using the Internet thinking you're all safe and sound, and there are pesky hackers just waiting to see you slip up. Get a VPN, and stay protected. So the hackers don't get access to personal information that you wouldn't want them to have. For example your credit card information. Don't let them go on a shopping spree with your money, no. We're not gonna let them do that. But two! There is still talk on for example things like net neutrality, which would mean that you might not have access to everything that you have access to right now. And if you want to keep your full access then Nord VPN is the way to go. You can just with one click move to a whole different country. How incredible! Nord VPN is offering a 70% off with a three-year plan and you get one month free on top of that, if you use code Angelika Oles at checkout. That is code Angelika Oles. So the way I use node VPN apart from just privacy reasons is Netflix. I spend 90% of my time at home, I work from home, I live from home ,I breathe at home, just normal human things you know. So I have seen all of British Netflix, I don't think there is a single show on UK Netflix that I have not seen, and I'm sick and tired of waiting for these new seasons to come out, so what am I going to do? I'm gonna hop over to a whole different country. So for exampleAmerican Netflix has Criminal Minds and The Walking Dead, which both are incredible shows that I want to start watching. However if you're in America and you wanna jump over to the UK you're gonna get classic shows like The Prince of Bel-Air. Are you kidding me? You guys don't have that on your Netflix? Wow. What a shame. But apart from that you can move to Canada. You can with Australia. So can just see what's all around the world, Netflix has that top 10 trending in every country thing, so you can hop over to Australia and see what they're watching and you might find some new gems that you otherwise just wouldn't be aware of. So like I said, if you want a 70 percent off with an extra month, which will basically be just over $100 for three years of Nord VPN, use AngeliKa Oles at checkout. And now back to the video. (Oles, 2020, 00:13)

The second ad (Transcript 11) starts with justifying why the influencer accepted the affiliation, which is not one of the moves described by Bakhtin and then moves straight into call for response and incentive (“Go on nordvpn.com/angelikaoles to get 70% off of a three year plan with one month free”), before the viewer knows what the product is. What follows

43 is brief detailing (“VPN, one helps to protect you, for example when you're using public Wi-

Fi”) followed by pressure tactics (“you can be in a cafe, using the Internet thinking you're all safe and sound, and there are pesky hackers just waiting to see you slip up”). After pressure tactics there is a short part of more detailing mixed with justification (“there is still talk on for example things like net neutrality, which would mean that you might not have access to everything that you have access to right now. And if you want to keep your full access then

Nord VPN is the way to go”), but they are interrupted by a repetition of incentive and call for response (“Nord VPN is offering a 70% off with a three-year plan and you get one month free on top of that, if you use code Angelika Oles at checkout. That is code Angelika Oles.”). The longest part of the segment is the endorsement (“I spend 90% of my time at home, I work from home, I live from home ,I breathe at home, just normal human things you know. So I have seen all of British Netflix”) and the segment ends with a third repetition of incentive and response (“so like I said, if you want a 70 percent off with an extra month, which will basically be just over $100 for three years of Nord VPN, use AngeliKa Oles at checkout”).

Content-wise, the two advertisements are similar. The second advertisement does not contain credentials and there’s justification instead of targeting, but otherwise they contain the same moves. Furthermore, while they are different companies, they both concern cybersecurity and the pressure tactics are similar in nature. However, there are clear differences in the structure. While the first ad has a consistent length of each move spanning over one or two sentences to it, the second one is less consistent and often redundant (“don't let them go on a shopping spree with your money, no we're not gonna let them do that”). The second ad has also much bigger emphasis on endorsement, making the recommendation more personalised.

While the first ad mentions using VPN while connecting to public Wi-Fi, which is one of the generic selling points of the product, the second ad goes into specific, including personalised show recommendations. There are also prominent instances of the influencer’s informal

44 idiolect that could be recognisable to her audience (“pesky hackers”, “iffy situation”, “a whole different country”).

That is not to say that any of these tactics is inferior. It simply ties back to the fact that affiliate advertising is a hybrid of advertising and YouTube videos. Clarity of rhetorical moves and following the script foregrounds the advertiser’s voice and appeals to the communicative purpose of promotion, while personification of the script emphasizes the influencer’s persona and appeals to the audience’s parasocial relationship with them. Not all examples are as unified in their style as Transcripts 10 and 11. A lot of them include both sections where the influencers are following the script and sections of clear personalisation, so these two tactics are complementary, rather than mutually exclusive.

2.4. Summary To summarize the most important points of this chapter, affiliate advertising is a hybrid subgenre of advertising, which is a genre which is defined by its communicative purpose to influence the audience’s opinions or attitudes and is achieved by the means of persuasion, and a YouTube video, which is a type of video created for the YouTube platform characterised by the YouTuber’s interaction with their audiences. Affiliate advertising is then a business relationship where one party is compensated for promoting another party to their audiences and thus expanding the audience reach. Their compensation is usually commission- based and therefore relies on the audience accepting the offer presented to them in the advertisement.

The advertisement is native and therefore inserted directly within accompanying content. There are therefore strategies the influencers use to separate it from or connect it to accompanying content. These strategies are grouping the ad with other content in pre-roll or post-roll position, disclosures of affiliation and various types of transitions. Thanks to these

45 strategies the advertisement and the accompanying content are always clearly divisible and audience confusion and non-disclosure are therefore not occurring the way they might in case of other native advertisement types.

Contrary to my preliminary expectations, there are no true connections between the advertising and the accompanying content. Most connections to the rest of the video occur in the form of segue transitions and do not carry into the actual segment. The genre is therefore not influenced by the accompanying text but rather by the influencer’s online persona.

As for the segment’s inner structure, there is a voluntary scale of script-compliance.

The scripts seem to be clearly structured and contain suggested selling points and persuasion strategies. The influencers are, however, able to personalise them, which often leads to loss in structural clarity, with different influencers favouring different approaches. However, some traces of the scripts are always present which are often recognisable as they are presented in the form of a list or suggesting that they do indeed contain compulsory points to mention.

3. Participants and Their Interactions

The definition of affiliate advertising suggests that the participation framework of this particular genre is more complex than with other subgenres in the same category. The addition of a third party with their own agenda aside from the advertiser and their audience muddies the channels through which the message travels to the receiver even beyond the usual TV spot’s tangle of writers, actors and producers. The fact that the influencer is given such freedom regarding the ad’s production means that they are largely constructing their own role.

That is why this whole chapter is dedicated to exploring the relationship between the affiliate, the advertiser, and the audience. First, we will focus on the participation framework, including the roles of the two advertising parties in production of the advert and the levels of

46 their interaction with the audience and then we will explore how the influencers foreground or background these roles in the advertisement using positioning and narratives to use the participant framework to aid in their persuasion efforts.

3.1 Participation Framework

There is more to affiliate advertising than the influencer relaying the advertiser’s message to the audience and to characterise the interaction as such would be reductive. The marketing segment is presented in context of a YouTube video and while the speaker remains the same, the relationships between participants change, as do their roles. Their interactions also take place on multiple levels.

In order to accurately capture this complexity of interaction I will be using the concept of participation framework. This notion allowed him to analyse participants of a spoken encounter and their roles in a specific context, not limited to the speaker and hearer, and identify not only how they are contributing to production of the utterance, but also how they perceive it even without being the target recipient (Goffman, 1981).

3.1.1. YouTube

YouTube’s participation framework is, analogically to other social media, defying the traditional speaker-hearer dyad of face to face conversation characterised by alternating turn- taking). It could be rather described as a “mediated quasi-interaction”. This type of interaction was created by what was once called “mass communication”, as it is characterised by the potentially infinite number of recipients. It is also characterised by asynchronicity of turns, “stretching of social relations across space and time”. The “quasi” prefix denotes that it is monological in its nature (Thompson, 2020: 5). Communication on YouTube is multi- modal and can transpire on both one-to-many and intergroup levels and audience participation

47 lines are blurred as participants may become co-creators through their interactions with the content, such as comments, video responses, participations in polls etc. (Dynel, 2014: 38).

In 2014 Dynel proposed a participation framework which served as a representation of all possible interactions in a YouTube video, not all of which have to take place. While she bases her framework on a video that was not primarily made for the platform, but for television and therefore not featuring a YouTube influencer, as demonstrated in previous chapter, it applies to the platform itself and can be easily modified for a YouTube video as defined in this thesis. Dynel identifies three levels of interaction. The first is the level of video interaction, with a speaker, addressee, a third party and overhearer. In my data the addressee is usually the broader YouTube audience, unless there are more influencers present in one video. In these cases, these influencers often take on a role of third party as well when the audience is addressed with them present. I would also argue that in some of my data there may be more embedded instances of this first level, since many of these videos are reactions to or critiques of other videos, which are partially shown on screen. However, this is the case in the main portion of the video and not the advertising segment, so I will not be reflecting it in my model.

The second level is the level of sender-recipient interaction. It concerns the Influencer posting the video on their platform and the audience's reception of it. Dynel maintains that in their nature YouTube videos, or TV, in that matter, cannot have unratified viewers, since they are posted publicly. The sender and recipient are therefore the only two involved parties, without further division. The third and final level is then the level of YouTube comments with speaker, addressee and third party (Dynel, 2014).

However, the complexity and multiplicity of participant roles becomes elevated in case of affiliate advertising, which adds another participant on the production end. Dynel’s model does not account for the absent production participants, presumably because their

48 involvement is not explicitly apparent in her data - while the TV show is presumed to have screenwriters, producers etc., they are never mentioned in the context of the video. However, in case of affiliate advertising the advertiser’s involvement is foregrounded to such an extent, that despite being partially concealed to the audience, the advertiser should be included in the model, since they take both roles of the producers and the audience.

Transcript 12: Foregrounding production and reception roles of the advertiser [Connor, the owner of the channel, sitting at the table with two other influencers who were present in the video, Gooden and Gonzales] Connor: Well those videos made no sense right guys? But you know what does make sense? Connor, Gooden and Gonzales: [Connor prompting the other two to recite with him in awkward manner] Eating good food for a reasonable price! Connor: Let's hear from a word... let's hear it from a word from our sponsor. [cut to B-roll footage including Connor cooking] Hello Fresh is a good friend of Curtis town and I'm always super stoked when I get the opportunity to work with them, because I genuinely eat their food every single day when I'm at home … And all you have to do is go to hellofresh.com and enter promo code curtistown80 or just click the link in the description. Thank you so much for sponsoring today's video Hello Fresh. Love you! Bye bye! (Connor, 2019, 16:34)

In Transcript 12 we can observe that the influencer transitions into the advertising segment with the phrase “let's hear it from a word from our sponsor”. This phrase was not coined for affiliate advertising, but its iterations are used in other types of advertising. In fact, the phrase originated well before the advent of online streaming services and though I was not able to find its exact origins, it seems to be associated with radio commercials from as early as the 20’s. It is important that the original advertising segments that followed the phrase, while sometimes being read out by the same radio host that presented the programme, were scripted and the radio host was not a co-author. And while this phrase may have just been appropriated by the YouTube users who grew up listening to radio commercials, by using it they directly

49 admit, that the words that are about to follow are not entirely their own, foregrounding the advertiser as a concealed production party.

The vast majority of the advertising is directed towards the audience, but at the very end by the phrase “Thank you so much for sponsoring today's video Hello Fresh. Love you!

Bye bye!” the influencer also addresses the advertiser directly without them being present in the room, but rather talking to the camera in the same way he addresses his audience and therefore positioning the advertiser in the same role.

To further prove this claim I will use the level of comments to illustrate that the advertiser’s involvement on both production and reception end is known to the YouTube viewers as well

Figure 25: Reply thread discussing the advertiser’s production input (Knowing Better, 2019)

In Figure 25 a viewer displays belief that the advertiser will watch the video and the influencer informs them that the advertiser is more involved in the production process, than they have previously thought. The replies then commend both the influencer for somehow being able to “get (the wording of the ad) past” the advertiser, as well as the advertiser for allowing the influencer to personalise the script, thus making it more entertaining for his fans.

While the influencer is addressed directly, the advertiser is addressed in third person, even though the messages are concerning them, denoting that they are not considered a ratified participant for the comment section level. However, this alone does not disqualify them as a participant. As Dynel and many other authors have pointed out, classifying recipients of media such as TV or online streaming as overhearers or unratified is problematic, since these media are devised for a broader audience (Scannell, 1991; Hutchby, 2006; O’Keeffe, 2006;

Lorenzo-Dus, 2009; as cited in Dynel 2014). The same then applies to comment sections and this notion of no recipient being excluded extends to the advertiser, who becomes a part of the broader audience. The advertiser in the recipient position also has different power, presumably being able to police the content and issue sanctions even after the video has been produced and broadcasted. But since this level of interaction is never made public or foregrounded in any of my data, I will not be accounting for it in the framework.

With this in mind, I have built up on Dynel’s framework to include another embedded level I dubbed the level of pre-video interaction the advertiser’s role as the producer is strongly implied within the video level and they become a part of the collective sender, however, they are not present in the video interaction and therefore cannot be considered a part of it. Furthermore, the speaker is then reframed to a collective sender, since the influencer, although being a co-author of the message, inadvertently positions themselves as a mediator, relaying 3rd party information, alluding to interaction that has taken place prior to the video. Other changes are, however, not necessary. Outside the first level the role of the

51 advertiser merges with the role of the YouTube audience, becoming recipient on the sender- recipient level and third party on the level of YouTube comments.

level of sender-recipient interaction RECIPIENT SENDER 3

(COLLECTIVE) SENDER 2

level of pre-video interaction

SPEAKER ADDRESSEE

(COLLECTIVE) SENDER 1

level of video interaction SPEAKER level of YouTube comments THIRD SPEAKER PARTY THIRD PARTY

ADDRESSEE OVERHEARER ADDRESSEE

Figure 26: Dynel’s model augmented for affiliate advertising. (Original retrieved from: Dynel, 2014: 50)

3.1.2. Production Format

The transition from the main focus of the video to the advertising segment is also characterised by not only a shift, but outright amalgamation of production roles, as introduced by Goffman (1981).

To expand the rather simplified notion of a speaker, Goffman proposes the notion of a production format and introduces a triad of production roles. The first role is an animator, who Goffman likens to a “sounding box”. They are the one relaying the message, even

52 without necessarily having authored it. The author is a separate role. They are the individuals who have conceived the message that the animator is relaying. And finally, there is the principal - a person or a group who is represented by the message and responsible for it.

In the may body of the video these roles are usually clearly cut - the influencer is typically the author, animator and principal alike, unless they are a part of a larger group or have a ghost-writer producing their content. However, within the advertiser segment, their role of an animator remains, but their authorship becomes shared with the advertiser. It cannot be argued that the influencer would entirely lose their authorship role; after all, their personal experience with the product is crucial to the affiliate advertising format. But they can also no longer be considered the sole author thanks to the existence of the script.

This partial shift also applies to the role of the principal from the influencer to the advertising company. The same focus on personal endorsement that makes them a co-author also ensures their co-principality. This would not be the case if the advertisements were entirely scripted by the advertiser, but since the influencer includes their personalised experience with the product and associates their brand with the influencer’s, falsity of certain claims, even when provided by the script and not authored by the influencer could inadvertently threaten the influencer’s integrity and trustworthiness. There are also legal repercussions, as they could be held responsible by the FTC, leading to monetary sanctions in case of misleading or insufficiently disclosed endorsement (Electronic Code of Federal

Regulations, 2020, §255).

This change of roles is often subtle; however the addition of another production party affects dynamics of the participant framework and the influencer chose to foreground or background these roles in different ways, negotiating the scale between trustworthiness and low accountability. By personalising the segment and minimizing generic claims, they become more accountable for their claims, but also seem more trustworthy in their personal

53 endorsement, while by choosing to minimize the personalisation they lose the trustworthiness factor but are less likely to face criticisms for subjective claims, shifting accountability towards the advertiser. I will present three Transcripts below to illustrate these choices. They are structurally fairly similar, as they all include segues into the segment instead of a jump cut, which pose as an intermediate stage between the content and the ad.

Transcript 13: high level of admission of authorship and principality [sitting at a table and talking into the camera] Well, it looks like it's now up to me to clean up the mess I made, not only on my face but also just out of frame. What lies beneath to the camera for you. For instance I don't have any pants on right now. But you wouldn't know that, just kidding. Yes I do. Or do I. With everyday activities like cleaning up it can start to feel like a bit of a chore, but it really makes all the difference to have something fun to keep you company. [switch to sped up b-roll footage of cleaning up the filming space and taking off her makeup with a voiceover] Oh thank goodness I have pants on. How convenient that today's video is sponsored by Audible. I love Audible because they have thousands of audio books, podcasts, guided meditations and lots of other cool stuff and things that help time go by faster. Or at least make time more enjoyable. Like when I clean up my 50-minute crafts. I told myself I should really start listening to a self- help book, something to brighten my days, but then I came across Amy Poehler's book Yes Please. And courtesy of Amy's humor and honesty, it actually turned out to be the perfect self-help book for me and I'm hooked, and now I just want to be Amy Poehler’s friend so badly. So I recommend giving your earholes a treat and downloading the audible app, and then from there you can download titles, and listen to them offline anytime anywhere. And you can click the link in my description box audible.com/daddy or text daddy to 500 500 for a free 30-day trial and you'll get one title and two audible originals free. Now if you'll excuse me I am just going to break continuity and do my outro. Even though you just watch me put my lights away and put on PJs and wash off my makeup. (Long, 2020, 16:46)

The influencer in Transcript 13 starts the transition to their advertising content by showing the backstage of her tidying up the setup after having finished filming the main content, which establishes a strong claim to the authorship role as she is seemingly stepping outside her online persona, which is rather over the top and comedic, to show the backstage. She not only claims to have personal experience with the product, but also

54 shows a b-roll footage of her actively using it. Her endorsement is also personalised by mentioning a specific product from the site she enjoys. She uses first person statements throughout the message to present the selling points: “I love Audible, because they have . . .

”, rather than Audible has, or “I recommend giving your earholes a treat and downloading the audible app” instead of download the Audible app. This signifies willingness to vouch for the product and therefore be seen as a co-principal, which, despite the endorsement nature of affiliate advertising and its emphasis on the influencer , this is not as self-evident as it seems, as we will see in further Transcripts.

Transcript 14: mid level of admission of authorship and principality [standing at a kitchen counter and talking into the camera, a cup with Trade Coffee logo in the shot] The next hack isn’t one that I’ve seen in one of those videos, but it’s how coffee can enhance the flavor of chocolate. Now I don't know if that's actually true, I just know that I've done a row of recipes in the past and seen so many recipes, where they use coffee and chocolate recipes? I want to see if it's gonna work. [switch to a b-roll footage of the influencer preparing the coffee with voiceover] And thanks so much to Trade Coffee, for sponsoring this week's video and supplying us with coffee to test this hack out. I don’t know about you guys, but I love experimenting with different coffee flavors, except grocery store selections are so limiting and when you get something you never know it's a kind of coffee that you're even gonna like. [switching between talking to camera and b-roll]. For the longest time I felt like I was drinking that like crappy diner coffee, but at home until I found blends that I actually really liked, but trade makes that process so much easier for you. [reading from her laptop] You can discover new ethically sourced coffees from nation's top toasters that are personalized to you based on your taste. [b-roll footage of the sponsor’s website] You start off by taking their coffee quiz. And that's gonna help determine the best coffees for you, based on things like how you brew your coffee and intensity of a roast you like. They then make recommendations based on your preferences from over 400 roasters. [talking to camera + b-roll of making coffee] Just okay coffee is not okay to them, they're going to continue modifying your suggestions based on all the coffees you've tried and how you've liked them. You can choose to set up a delivery frequency so you never have to worry about running out of coffee again again, I know we have all been there, and you'll have freshly roasted coffee delivered right to your door. Trade is offering 30% off your first bag with free shipping for the first hundred people to apply, you can check the link out down below in my description box, and the promotion will be automatically applied. [ending the ad with no clear transition] So the way I'm going to test whether coffee actually enhances the flavor of chocolate is . . .

(The Icing Artist, 2020, 08:15 ) Where the influencer in Transcript 13 showed the product as a part to her backstage life, the one in Transcript 14 attempts to minimize the authorship shift to a lesser degree, by creating a superficial link between the advertiser and her video (“thanks so much to trade coffee for sponsoring week's video and supplying a swift coffee to test this hack out”). I argue for the link’s superficiality, as coffee is not a scarce or expensive commodity that would need to be provided as a part of a sponsorship, especially since she later admits to being a coffee drinker and therefore likely already has some available (“I felt like I was drinking that like crappy diner coffee but at home until I found blends that I actually really liked”). However, while being superficial, the link is not entirely meaningless; it also emphasizes the influencer’s authorship by framing the product as having been specifically chosen to complement the main content and she even alludes to altering her content to allow for better transition to the sponsored segment (“The next hack isn’t one that I’ve seen in one of those videos”).

In the main advertising body, she then strengthens the authorship claim again by providing personal experience and using personalised footage of her interacting with the product. However, in contrast to the first influencer, she shifts the principality away from herself by having the first-person usage limited to statements unrelated to the product. For instance, while the previously mentioned “I felt like I was drinking that like crappy diner coffee but at home until I found blends that I actually really liked” statement is about coffee and personalises the ad, nowhere does she state that the blend she ended up liking is from the company she advertises and she does not name them. While the first influencer in

Transcript 2 used similar wording (“I came across Amy Poehler's book Yes Please”), by naming the product the viewers are able to verify that the site she advertises actually offers it. Furthermore, all sales points in Transcript 3 are presented in either second (“you can discover new ethically sourced coffees from nation's top Roasters”) or third person (“they're

56 going to continue modifying your suggestions”) and the ad is presented as listing of features and then a way to use the service but does not contain an actual recommendation to do so.

Transcript 15: low level of admission of authorship and principality [talking to the camera, sitting at a table] Well I hope we all learned a valuable lesson today about how you can't believe anything you see on the internet, because all of it's a lie except for everything I'm about to say about today's sponsor. [transition to green screen of being upside down in front of ExpressVPN logo, wearing Express VPN t-shirt] Hi. I'm upside down. Just like my life used to be. Before I started using express VPN. [green screen of talking to camera with generic B-roll footage in the background - VPN interface, Netflix, related images and abstract animations] Have you ever tried watching a show you thought was on Netflix, only to find out it's not available in your country, you were probably tempted to just get up and move to France. But I'm here to tell you that there's a simpler solution. With the virtual private network you can trick your internet into thinking that you're just about anywhere in the world which unlocks so much content you probably thought wasn't available to you. And Express VPN has servers in 94 different countries so you're pretty much guaranteed to find something to watch. And of course that's just a feature I find most fun to talk about, but express VPN will also secure your data while you're browsing the internet which is especially helpful if you're using a public Wi-Fi, like at the airport, or when you’re at target, when you use public Wi-Fi you're exposing your information to the possibility of being stolen by other people on the network. But Express VPN will mask your IP address and encrypt your data. Preventing hackers from even getting a whiff of your precious info. They also happen to have consistently faster speeds than other VPN providers and apps for almost every device. To find out how you can get three months free click the link in the description that's expressvpn.com/drew, take back your internet privacy today, or just watch a movie you didn't think you could. Thank you to Express VPN for sponsoring today’s video, now back to that weird guy, who sits at his desk all day. [talking to the camera, sitting at a table] Oh man, I'm so glad I make my clone do all the brand deals for me so, I never have to advertise anything. (Gooden, 2020, 12:07)

The influencer in Transcript 15 largely backgrounds up both principality and authorship. He introduces the advertising segments with two accounts of hyperbole (“you can't believe anything you see on the internet because all of it's a lie except for everything

I'm about to say about today's sponsor” and “I'm upside down just like my life used to be before I started using express VPN”). While these are undeniably inserted there for humorous effect and not to be taken entirely seriously, he is bringing attention to

57 stereotypes that frame advertising as disingenuous - its untruthful and exaggerated claims.

This already shifts the principality away from him as it takes away from the genuineness of his claims.

This is only highlighted by the fact that there are only two I statements in the sales point portion and they are both focused on him only relaying the message, rather than authoring it or vouching for it (“I’m here to tell you”, “that's just a feature I find most fun to talk about”). Both of those claims strongly imply that his role is to be the animator and diminish his other production impact. Outside from the hyperbolic claim about his life being “upside down” before using the product, which has no informative value about how this product actually impacted him, there is no instance of personal experience or opinion.

The background footage is also generic and impersonal, and even though he may be the author of some of it, this is not immediately evident.

But the part that is the most telling about the role he positions himself into is the segue leading back into the main portion of the video (now back to that weird guy, who sits at his desk all day” and “oh man, I'm so glad I make my clone do all the brand deals for me so, I never have to advertise anything”). This transition, while clearly inserted for comedic value as well as the initial hyperbole, still creates strong connotations of the influencer trying to distance himself from authorship and principality. He introduces his advertising self as a

“clone”, separating his “real” self from the segment in direct contrast to what the first influencer has done by showing the backstage in the segment. However, the key phrase is “I never have to advertise anything”, where not only does he frame doing the segment as something that is required of him, but it strongly implies that he does not necessarily enjoy it, which in turns insinuates he is not in a position of power and therefore neither the author, nor the principal.

By choosing the extent to which they foreground or background their authorship and

principality the influencers, much like with personalisation of the structure, negotiate their

level of trustworthiness versus their accountability. Segments with higher levels of admitted

authorship and principality are inherently more trustworthy as the influencer basically

vouches for the product. They, however, also take upon themselves a higher level of

accountability and open themselves to criticism in case of the audience’s negative

experience with the product or service. By backgrounding authorship and accountability,

they then achieve the opposite. They mitigate future criticisms by presenting the advertiser

as the main accountable party, however, they risk their endorsement being perceived as less

genuine.

3.3. Parasocial Relationships

Relationships between the influencer and their viewer are described as parasocial. The term was first introduced by Horton and Wohl in 1956 and as part of the phrase parasocial interaction, which was defined as a moderated one-sided interaction between media personalities and their audience. Where social interactions are based on mutual bi-directional communication, parasocial interactions are mono-directional with the celebrity being the sender and their audience a recipient.

However, the concept was later expanded to parasocial relationships (PSRs), since it entails not only the act of sending and receiving the message, but a long-term relationship based on the celebrity’s repeated media appearances and their recurrent interaction with their audiences. PSR therefore encompasses cross-situational relationships exceeding the limits of the message transmission (Liebers & Schramm, 2019: 5). These interactions are not limited to the celebrity’s real self but may also be formed between audiences and a media character the

59 celebrity portrays. This is caused by the human brain processing media experience similarly to direct experience (Kanazawa, 2002).

3.3.1. YouTube and the Ideal Self

Since the concept was first introduced, the media landscape has changed significantly. With the emergence of social media bi-directional communication between the celebrity and their audience became commonplace. Likes or views are an impersonal metric of the engagement of the audience as a whole, while comments and replies offer the possibility of closer interaction.

However, where the direction of interaction changed, the concept of mediation remained. One of the core aspects of PSR is the audience getting to experience mediated life through the celebrity. In the case of YouTube, PSRs are formed within the viewer and the influencer’s digital self. While negotiating one’s self-image is commonplace in regular social interactions as well, the nature of YouTube videos with their asynchronicity and usage of editing serve as an ideal platform for construction of the ideal self, it is therefore appropriate to differentiate between the real person and their online persona.

PSR are ‘‘grounded in interpersonal notions of attraction, perceived similarity or homophily, and empathy’’ (Rubin & Rubin, 2001: 326). They are usually deliberately formed by the influencer, because by having a relationship with their audience they can generate stable engagement and it therefore has direct correlation with their revenue - the more engagement a video has, the more likely it is to be promoted by the YouTube algorithm. An example of this would be using certain inclusive referents for the audience, which was discussed in the previous chapter, or even the very act of asking their audience to subscribe. They are therefore encouraged by the platform to construct their digital selves to have these traits and to be

60 relatable to the viewer. This appeal to relatability is however often deconstructed as the influencer gains substantial following, as they then accrue wealth from YouTube’s ad revenue and reach somewhat of a celebrity status (Burgess & Green, 2008: 24). Some of YouTube’s biggest creators routinely face criticism in the past for non-disclosure of certain positive aspects of their lives, such as their income, in order to appear more relatable to the viewer

(Gooden, 2019; ItzKeisha, 2020; Ferg, 2019).

While encouraging PSRs is not technically required for generating engagement, which can be achieved by show of skills or other strategies, it becomes very important when it comes to endorsement. Chung and Cho’s study Fostering Parasocial Relationships with

Celebrities on Social Media: Implications for Celebrity Endorsement (2017) has shown that the factor of celebrities being active on social media and actively participating in PSRs has a positive impact on results of their participation in marketing strategies including product endorsement and they are viewed as trustworthy sources, by which they boost the advertiser’s credibility. Their findings have also shown that the celebrity’s presence on social media can have a direct negative effect on their trustworthiness regarding the endorsement if they do not display character traits such as t source trustworthiness is a character-based traits “with subdimensions such as benevolence, honesty (Altman & Taylor, 1973), predictability (Tyler,

2001), and dependability (Rempelet al., 1985)” (Chung & Cho, 2017: 490), which further strengthens the notion of PSRs being directly connected to the influencers' idealised digital selves.

Interestingly, in certain lower stake cases, building a strong PSR with an audience can ensure that a positive reception of the influencer’s idealised self is not compromised by dishonest endorsements. By foregrounding their monetary motivations for accepting affiliate deals, the YouTubers can uphold the positive appeal to honesty without necessarily being honest about the product.

Raid: Shadow Legends (R:SL) is an excellent example of this phenomenon. Ad reads for this mobile game include compulsory points that have been criticised to half-truths or falsities by the YouTube community (SomeOrdinaryGamers, 2019; Wallace, 2020), to the point where their ad campaign became infamous throughout the whole platform. However,

YouTubers who accept a deal with R:SL rarely face serious criticism for choosing to cooperate with this sponsor. To illustrate, I have gathered several comments and replies from comment sections of the four R:SL segments I have in my dataset.

27: (Gonzales, 2019)

28: (Gonzales, 2019)

29: (Gonzales, 2019)

30: (Gonzales, 2019)

31: (READY TO GLARE, 2020)

32: (READY TO GLARE, 2020)

33: (READY TO GLARE, 2020)

34: (READY TO GLARE, 2020)

35: (Logdotzip, 2019)

36: (Logdotzip, 2019)

37: (Logdotzip, 2019)

38: (Pyrocynical, 2019)

39: (Pyrocynical, 2019)

40: (Pyrocynical, 2019)

Figure 27 - 40: Raid Shadow Legends ads comment section

As evident above, the viewers are well aware of the influencer’s monetary motivations

(Figure 27), but do not ascribe them negative connotations, often even congratulating them for securing a well-paid deal (27, 29, 30), or defending them in rare cases when such criticisms are voiced (Figure 40). Negative comments are usually directed towards the advertiser, rather than the influencer (Figures 28, 32, 35 and 37), even to the point where they are jokingly implying that the influencer is being threatened or forced by the advertiser (Figures 30 and

39). On the contrary, the influencers are praised for making the advertising segments interesting despite its prevalence on the platform and the repetition by other influencers

(Figures 31 and 38).

To conclude, the PSR YouTubers build with their audience that are built on relatability and honesty not only benefit the advertiser by making them a trustworthy affiliate, but also partially shield the influencer from criticism pertaining to the dishonesty of their endorsements, since they are being honest about the endorsement being financially motivated.

This is, of course, only the case with low stakes sponsorships. R:SL is a harmless mobile game that is free to download and any in-game transactions are voluntary. There have been notable cases where YouTubers were publicly criticised for their endorsement of controversial products (Cyael, 2018), so it is not to say that their likeable online persona and their appeal to honesty about their motivation makes them immune to any criticism in this area. However, it does provide them a certain leeway.

3.4. Summary

This chapter explored the complexity of the YouTube affiliate advertising participation framework. YouTube videos are mediated quasi-interaction that happens on multiple levels, which was demonstrated via adapting Dynel’s model for YouTube communication to include the off-screen advertiser, who is foregrounded to such an extent that their voice is present in the final advertisement.

Furthermore, this chapter also explored the triad of production roles as introduced by

Goffman in his production format. It became clear that in affiliate the influencers are not just animators relaying the third-party message to their audiences, but additionally adapt the roles of both author and principal. They may then choose to let their audience realise this fact or to background these roles and present themselves as animators. By negotiating the extent of their authorship and principality they are able to either increase the trustworthiness of their endorsement or mitigate future criticism.

Finally, the chapter has focused on parasocial relationships, which are an integral part to the affiliate’s status as an influencer. Thanks to their long-term mediated interaction with the influencer via the social aspects of YouTube’s platform the audience has formed a connection with the influencer’s constructed digital self. Not only does this connection aid the influencer, since the PSRs based on notions of similarity and empathy lend their endorsement perceived honesty, they are also less likely to be criticised even upon admitting their monetary motivations for the deal, because their audiences are likely to understand those motivations.

They are additionally partially shielded against criticisms of dishonesty to a certain extent, which serves as supporting evidence of the advertisement’s primary goals discussed in the upcoming chapter.

4. Persuasion Strategies and Goals

With the previous chapters we have concluded how affiliate advertising works from a structural and genre point of view and who are the participants and therefore explored how it works. This leaves us with perhaps the most important question - why does it work.

We have discussed the topic of parasocial relationship but have not yet delved into which strategies the influencers use to effectively utilise them for promotional purposes. This chapter will explore just that. The previous chapter defined the participants’ production roles, but as we have already alluded to, the influencers are able to affect the narrative in the audience’s eyes by foregrounding and backgrounding certain aspects of their roles. In this chapter we will discuss what positions do the influencers construct for themselves and other participants regardless of their real roles and how they use the constructed narrative in persuasion.

We will also look into persuasion strategies that occur across the dataset and analyse why they are effective in regard to PSRs. The chapter also explores the persuasion strategies that are employed by the advertiser and the influencer, highlighting their different incentives behind the advertisement segment.

Building upon those different incentives we will also explore the influencers’ relationship to promotion and persuasion strategies outside of the affiliate advertising and illustrate that the affiliate advertising segment is not an isolated instance of promotion in otherwise non-promotional content but could be rather described as a sort of 3rd party metapromotion in a text with other elements of promotional character.

4.1. Positioning Theory

The exploration of the participation framework has proven that there are many

instances where the participants use their words to enhance or conceal certain aspects of

their roles. While their roles remain constant despite these tactics, what changes is the

overall narrative of these segments and the way the audience perceives them. This practice

is called positioning and further exploring how it is utilized will help us uncover where do

the influencers attempt to locate themselves and the other participants in relation to each

67 other (Moghaddam and Harré, 2010: 2). When explaining the very concept of advertising,

Myers maintains that ads construct positions for their audience (1994: 7) and this chapter will prove that affiliate advertising’s goal is no different. In case of affiliate advertising, the main goal of positioning is to convince the audience to support the channel, whether by actually buying the product or just clicking the affiliate link

Positions differ from roles and have been described by Langenhove and Harré as their dynamic alternatives. While we have already established that roles of participants as introduced by Goffman are not entirely static and may change in different contexts, roles are dependent on involvement of participants in production or receptions, while positions are more dynamic in nature and constructed/negotiated by the participants themselves. They are also subjective and determined by various aspects including social standing and position of power, rather than simply dictated by one’s actions (Harré & Slocum, 2003). To illustrate, even if an influencer tries to conceal their co-authorship, they are still a co-author, but they may position themselves as a mediator if it better suits their narrative.

The positioning theory introduces three important aspects - position, storyline and illocutionary force, which is also known as the positioning triad. These aspects are not free- standing, but they interact with each other. The participants construct a certain storyline, position themselves and the others as characters in this storyline and then use this position to force a particular speech act. The positioning is often a felicity condition to realise this speech act (Harré & van Langenhove, 1999).

In case of affiliate advertising there is usually a rather clear storyline videos from my dataset follow - the storyline of a generous and benevolent company letting the influencer’s viewers support their favourite content creator while getting a good deal at the same time.

Transcript 16: example of positioning and storyline [sitting down, talking to the camera, with occasional personalised b/roll footage] So I’m having to literally go back and individually squirt resin into each one of those holes with the syringe. It was very very tedious. You know what else is very tedious.

Having to worry about whether or not your information is being stolen online. That is an amazing segue to me talking about my sponsor today nord VPN. Nord VPN is a virtual private network. That's what VPN stands for. It's a network of servers that allows you to send and receive data completely anonymously online. What nord does is they encrypt all of that information leaving and coming back. When I was over in the UK for maker central I was trying to watch a YouTube video and it kept telling me that it was not allowed in my country. Well I just went ahead and selected that I was over in the United States, so therefore the website thinks that I am now in the United States, then I could get back to watching my video while eating a buttload of shortbread cookies. Go to nordvpn.com/bobbyduke for 75% off a three-year plan that only comes up to $2.99 a month. And for a short time remember to use the code bobbyduke for an extra month for free. So if you want to help support the channel and protect yourself go to nordvpn.com/ b o b b y d u k e [spelling]. Do it for me, do it for you, do it for the children. (Bobby Duke Arts, 2019, 09:04)

Transcript 16 has been chosen for having a very common structure of narrative and positions within it in context of the analysed dataset. The advertiser is first introduced as

“sponsor”, even though that is not factually accurate, as affiliate programmes and sponsorships are different concepts - affiliate advertising is, as mentioned above, commission based, while sponsorship is, by its definition in the Cambridge online dictionary, offered “to support a person, organization or activity” and doesn’t require the sponsored side to offer anything in exchange (dictionary.cambridge.org, 2020). This wording therefore implies a certain degree of benevolence on the advertiser’s side. Affiliate partners are consistently introduced as sponsors throughout my whole dataset; in fact, 36 out of 39 videos contain either the word sponsor or sponsored and even the remaining 3 have a written disclosure containing those words either in the video or in the description.

Positioning the advertiser this way is therefore not an individual decision, but the genre standard, despite the word affiliation being commonly used in the advertiser’s term of service etc.

The main body of the segment is then composed of a list of sales points. It is done in a problem-solution structure, but the influencer introduces both a hypothetical problem the

audience could face (“having to worry about whether or not your information is being stolen

online”) as well as an actual problem they had that the product solved (“when I was over in

the UK for maker central I was trying to watch a YouTube video and it kept telling me that

it was not allowed in my country”), thus positions both themselves and the audience as

someone the product benefits. The influencer then closes the segment by saying “remember

to use the code bobbyduke for an extra month for free. So, if you want to help support the

channel and protect yourself go to nordvpn.com/ b o b b y d u k e. Do it for me, do it for the

children”. This further highlights the benevolence of the advertiser. Not only are they

offering the audience a month free, but they are also allowing them to support the creator at

the same time. This is the moment where the influencer uses the positioning to attempt a

speech act, telling their audience that if they want to be safe and support him, they should

take advantage of this generous offer, creating a position where refusing would not only

make a person pass up on free benefits, but it would also involve a direct choice not to

support him. It also creates a new position for the audience as another possibly benevolent

entity, in case to do so.

4.1.1. Names and Referents

Personal deixis and names are also used to further strengthen the narrative. In

Transcript 16 the influencer creates a link between himself and the audience, while distancing himself from the advertiser. The product itself is understandably presented either by its name

(“Nord VPN is a virtual private network) or as an it (it's a network of servers). However, this extends to the advertiser, who is always talked about in third person using either they or by the product (talking about my sponsor today nord VPN), never the company name. There is not a single instance in the dataset where the influencer would talk about the advertiser in second person, even though there is a contractual relationship and shared authorship, or where

70 they would further emphasise their personal involvement in the company by mentioning specific personnel. The advertiser is always a monolithic them synonymous with the product or service they offer. The only instance where they are sometimes referred to in the second person is when they are directly addressed when thanked for their support.

The audience is then usually referred to in second person, unless the segment is presented as a skit and another in-video participant takes the audience's place. The way viewers are referred to, however, varies more widely within the dataset than in case of the advertiser and some choices do position the audience in a certain way. Let us consider the following instances:

Transcripts 17-21: examples of audience positioning through reference

Transcript 17 Boy, do I have a treat for you? Skillshare are giving my subscribers a free 2 month unlimited access trial and then after that Skillshare only works out about $10 a month. It's an absolute bargain. All you have to do to claim this is click the link in the description or the link on screen (Harlock, 2019, 01:19)

Transcript 18 Let's hear from a word... let's hear it from a word from our sponsor. [cut to B-roll footage including Connor cooking] Hello Fresh is a good friend of Curtis town and I'm always super stoked when I get the opportunity to work with them, because I genuinely eat their food every single day when I'm at home (Connor, 2019, 16:44)

Transcript 19 I want to make clear here is that this company that is sponsoring us today did not reach out to me with the intent of me to make this video in particular. They did not offer me compensation to trash a competitor. (Marie, 2019, 01:03)

Transcript 20 Real quick before we continue. Honey is today's sponsor. This wouldn't be a Shane video if we didn't talk about Honey. Shopping online can be tricky, you never know if you're getting the best price. (Primink, 2019, 4:29)

Transcript 21 Thanks to Raid: Shadow Legends for sponsoring this video and thank you to you guys for checking out Raid: Shadow Legends. I hope you guys check them out. I hope you guys check out Raid: Shadow Legends, when you do, it directly supports my channel. helps me to continue branching out and doing other stuff. So thank you guys for all your help. (Gonzales, 2019, 02:59)

These examples show how the influencers can use reference to position the audience closer to themselves. Transcripts 17 and 18 position the audience as a community centred around the influencer as well as creating air of exclusivity of the offer. Using the terms “my subscribers” and “Curtis town” (influencer’s inclusive term for himself and his subscribers), they specify that they are addressing primarily people who have subscribed to them, even though the offer they are presenting has no such limitations. Transcripts 19 and 20 then strengthen the sense of community even further by using first person plural when collectively referring to the influencer and their audience (“company that is sponsoring us”, “this wouldn’t be a Shane video if we didn’t talk about Honey”). Transcript 21 then makes use of second person deixis, but by utilising you guys instead of simple you, the influencer stresses that she is addressing the collective audience rather than an individual.

The influencers positioning themselves closer to their viewers than to the advertiser further strengthens the PSR’s as well as their relatability, since it backgrounds their business relationship with the advertising company.

4.2. Persuasion Strategies

When discussing that advertising as a genre we have already mentioned that persuasion is its main communicative purpose and it is a type of social interaction that aims to influence attitudes and opinions of the audience. Persuasive strategy is then a “complex set of

72 linguistic tools employed to change attitudes and get responses without openly imposing any ideas on the recipient” (Romanova & Smirnova, 2019: 59). These techniques do not usually include overtly suggesting to the audience that they change their attitude or opinion, but rather appeal to different areas of human experience, such as emotions, morality, or sense of social belonging to induce these changes.

4.2.1. Theoretical Background

Persuasion has been studied for millennia and was originally researched as part of rhetorics. Even nowadays many persuasion studies not only in linguistics, but also in marketing, rely on the rhetoric triangle, first introduced by Aristotle (Freese,1926). In it he identifies three modes of persuasion, each of them appealing to different areas - ethos, logos and pathos.

Logos appeals to reason and logic and persuasion strategies employing it include for instance being clear and specific, presenting sources, utilising graphs, charts and statistics and presenting the advertised option as the most logical or functional.

Ethos is then an appeal to credibility and the audience’s ethics. Ethos-specific persuasion strategies tend to highlight the character of the brand or the speaker presenting the product, make use of endorsements from trusted public figures or in contrast use the image of everyday ordinary people to elicit trust by relatability.

And finally, Pathos appeals to the viewer’s emotions and imagination. Persuasion strategies employing Pathos may use specific phrasing or imagery to evoke an emotion - whether it is a clip of a cute animal or a devastating disaster. A typical Pathos strategy would be using comedy or acting upon the popular phrase that “sex sells” (Cockroft & Cockroft,

1992).

Figure 41: Rhetorical triangle (Pformacademy, 2020, retrieved from: https://pformacademy.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/logon-ethos-pathos/)

Of course, these strategies are not mutually exclusive. Quite the opposite; the rhetorical triangle was designed to evoke the idea that they should be balanced within a text, none more important than the other. However, since affiliate advertising has two main participant sides collaborating on creation of the final text, we can analyse whether these parties favour appeal to one of these concepts and how they contribute to achieving this balance.

As mentioned, we can see traces of this categorisation of many modern approaches.

For instance, the division of advertisements to reason and tickle (Simpson, 2001) echo the sentiment that while there is distinction between appeal to logic and emotion, they are both valid forms of persuasion. That said, I will be adapting the triangle as a basis of my own categorisation to identify strategies that may be unique to affiliate advertising.

4.2.2. Affiliate Advertising-Specific Classification

Some of Bhatia’s rhetorical moves double as a persuasion strategy with an appeal to one of the three concepts. For instance, all the advertisements that contain detailing appeal to

74 reason, those utilising endorsement appeal to credibility and those containing endorsement may appeal to both credibility, but also emotions. Below I have detailed the main persuasion strategies that I have identified and what they appeal to (table 3).

Logos Ethos Pathos detailing endorsement humour demonstration credentials hypothetical comparison personal recommendation skit influencer justification anecdote content tie-in audience participation request support request Table 3: Persuasion strategies and their position on the rhetorical triangle

Overall, I have identified 14 distinct persuasion strategies, 7 of which appeal to ethos, as is to be expected from endorsement-based advertising. Most of the analysed ads contain strategies that appeal to all logos, ethos and pathos. Logos and ethos are present in all the ads

(with the exception of a single instance without any ethos strategies), while pathos seems more optional with about 1/4th of the ads not containing pathos strategies.

Furthermore, ethos strategies can be split into two subcategories. Those that appeal to credibility of the advertiser and those appealing to the credibility of the influencer (Table 4), since, as we have established, they act as two different entities and the influencer is not a part of the advertiser’s brand.

Ethos -advertiser Ethos - influencer endorsement influencer justification credentials content tie-in audience participation request impartiality claim personal recommendation

support request Table 4: Focus of ethos-based strategies

This distinction is also important because it marks the source of the strategy. With logos and ethos strategies focused on the advertiser the source is most likely the script. They are based on verifiable claims likely provided by the advertiser themselves. Pathos and ethos strategies focused on the influencer are then more personalised and therefore likely to be devised by the influencer. This becomes clearer upon explanation and demonstration of these strategies below.

Logos

● Detailing: definition of the product or service and description of its features, often

including technical or professional specifications. Often provided in the form of a list

and/or visibly read from a script. The most clearly recognizable instance of the

advertiser’s voice in the text.

Transcript 22 Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes covering dozens of creative and entrepreneurial skills. Premium membership gives you unlimited access so you can join the classes and communities that are just right for you. (Sauce Stache, 2019, 00:44)

● Demonstration: commentated demonstration of the product’s or service’s

functionality accompanied by visual demonstration making use of the platform’s

multimodality. Usually includes more influencer input than detailing and co-occurs

with endorsement or personal recommendation.

Transcript 23 You can choose whether you want to follow a meal plan or just get little tips throughout the day, and that's what I chose. So look, I logged in what I had for breakfast today and it tells me I can eat more. Grab a piece of fruit. (jasksfilms, 2020, 08:54)

● Comparison: comparison of the product to other options on the market, framing it as

the better option. The comparison is always indirect. Very likely to be provided by the

advertiser, since it is an objective claim.

Transcript 24 But Express VPN will mask your IP address and encrypt your data. Preventing hackers from even getting a whiff of your precious info. They also happen to have consistently faster speeds than other VPN providers and apps for almost every device. (Gooden, 2020, 12:59) Ethos

● Endorsement: recommendation of the product by the influencer. Strongly tied to the

script, usually supported by either detailing or credentials. In some cases it includes

elements of personalisation.

Transcript 25 I love Audible because they have thousands of audio books, podcasts, guided meditations and lots of other cool stuff and things that help time go by faster. Or at least make time more enjoyable. (Long, 2020, 17:16)

● Credentials: establishing the advertiser as trustworthy and competent by providing

qualifications. The least personalised of all ethos strategies – objective claims, likely

provided by the advertiser.

Transcript 26 You're so beautiful inside and out just like squarespace's designer templates. You've always been there for me day and night just like Squarespace is award- winning 24/7 customer support. (Mango Street, 2019, 07:35)

● Personal recommendation: recommendation of specific product from the

advertiser’s range or specific usage of the product that is personal to the influencer. Is

less focus on endorsing the quality of the product and more on preferences of the

influencer, giving the audience an opportunity to relate to them and select the same

option.

Transcript 27 They also offer leave-in treatments hair masks and hair serum which are also customized. I got the hair serum it makes my hair extremely soft and very nice smelling, ten of the ten would recommend. (STRANGE ÆONS, 2020, 01:27)

● Influencer justification: explanation of why the influencer accepted the affiliation - it

benefits the influencer’s credibility but may harm the advertiser’s. Serves to mitigate

criticism of “selling out”.

Transcript 28 This is gonna be quite time-consuming and not only that it's way more expensive then I thought it would be. This is over $500 worth superglue which is why I'm really glad that this video is sponsored by audible. (Jazza, 2020, 05:35)

● Content tie-in: creating a link between the advertising and non-advertising content

and therefore including the advertiser in PSRs between the influencer and their

audience. Often co-occurring with humour.

Transcript 29 We often hear about the top 1% reaping all of the benefits of our economy – well in an MLM, it’s the top 0.3% or 0.08%. You can make it if you just work hard enough and market your business properly. A skill you can learn by going to skl.sh/knowingbetter11. Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of courses taught by mentors in their upline. Take this course in social media marketing, learning how to create the perfect profile and gain more followers since none of your friends from summer camp will answer your messages anymore. (Knowing Better, 2019, 28:45)

● Audience participation request: invitations for the audience to co-create the

advertising segment’s content, unrelated to requests of purchasing the product. Least

common strategy - includes the advertiser in PSRs more than content tie-in but creates

audience engagement unrelated to the videos main content.

Transcript 30 I thought I'd pick out a few [audiobooks] for my hermit friends. B-doube-O got dr. sleep, Scar got how to start a landscaping business right now with no startup money, Iskall got the minecraft guide for beginners. I feel like he could

use that. Let me know down in the comments section your audio book suggestions for other members of the hermitcraft server. (Mumbo Jumbo, 2020, 04:52)

● Impartiality claim: establishing the influencer’s trustworthiness by defending the

impartiality of their endorsement, for instance by claiming to accept the affiliation

based on previous experience with the product. Lends credibility and trustworthiness

to the influencer.

Transcript 31 Dollar Shave Club was one of the first sponsors to take a chance on the Leon Lush YouTube channel over a year and a half ago and it's been a match made in heaven ever since. Their products were a staple in my grooming routine long before we ever started working together so when they approached me it was the perfect fit. (Lush, 2019, 04:07)

● Support request: a request to purchase/use the product unrelated to the benefits

offered by the product and advertiser, but rather as means to support the influencer and

their channel. Sometimes frames the channel’s well-being as being dependent on the

audience taking up the offer/conditions production of further content by it.

Transcript 32 Click that link right down below in the description box, raycon.com/repzion, to get 15% off your order to save even more money that you shouldn't have to pay. By clicking that first link in the description and supporting my sponsor you also support the channel so I can continue to make videos like this in the future. Thank you, I appreciate you. (Repzion, 2019, 01:03) Pathos

● Humour: employing humour to make the advertising segment interesting. Keeps

audience’s attention, makes them less likely to skip and makes the segment

memorable. It could also be considered to have elements of ethos, since the type of

humour is usually specific to the influencer’s brand.

Transcript 33 I noticed when internet historian did his ad read he had two phones. Two phones... I have four phones! Three dedicated for raid and the fourth

exclusively for listening to kpop. Look at all these people being game ended in raid shadow legends. It's okay though, they are skeletons and we all know skeletons have no rights. (Pyrocynical, 2019, 01:33)

● Hypothetical: promoting the product by posing hypothetical scenarios with problems

the product could solve. Sometimes used as a setup for the problem-solution structure

typical for ads. Meant to evoke relatability, or some cases humour, if the scenario is

hyperbolic.

Transcript 34 Have you ever tried watching a show you thought was on Netflix, only to find out it's not available in your country, you were probably tempted to just get up and move to France. But I'm here to tell you that there's a simpler solution. (Gooden, 2020, 12:21) ● Skit: a fictitious scripted scene unrelated to the advertisement. It does not have to

relate to the advertisement in any way, but rather serve to keep the audience's

attention.

Transcript 35 (I1 = influencer , I2 = Influencer 2) I1: I've never seen anything like that before. I2: What? What? I2: Playing a piano and tapping a tiny man on the shoulder? I1: Phantom of the Opera! Scarface, Little Women, Fantasia, The Jungle Book Les Miserables, Sound of Music The Gospel According to St John? The Sound of Music? I1: Oh wait! I've got it... it's NordVPN. (Foreman, 2019, 04:56)

● Anecdote: a short example of the product’s usage from the influencer’s life. Unlike

the hypothetical it is presented as a true occurrence and has a story-like structure.

Transcript 36 I'm very passionate about this deodorant and I'm gonna tell you why. Now a few years ago, I learned something bad about something that is in regular deodorants. I'm not allowed to talk about it right now but um, basically if you look up what regular deodorants have in them, they're not good for you. So a few years ago, I started my journey along the deodorant aisle of a store, um, and one I came across I was like, oh, this is nice. It smells like roses. It turned my armpits orange! I was like, beginning to give up on my natural deodorant journey, but then I found Native.

(Chloe Rose Art, 2020, 05:06) (Transcripts 22-35: examples of persuasion strategies)

As for frequency of usage for these strategies, the most common are those strategies that are likely provided by the script. They are the most consistent selling points and also most likely to be mandatory to mention. These are detailing, demonstration and endorsement. Apart from those three the strategies become more personalised and diverse, with personal recommendations, humour and content tie-ins being the most prevalent and skits and audience participation requests the least common (Figure 42)

Figure 42: Number of uses per persuasion strategy

Overall, ethos and pathos are present in every video with the exception of one lacking an ethos strategy (but containing pathos strategies). None of the ad could be therefore characterised as appealing to only one of the concepts.

This suggests that the main overarching strategies are logos on the advertiser’s side and PSRs on the influencers, with pathos strategies in form of humour or storytelling elements being optional.

4.3. Persuasion Goals

To fully interpret the motivations behind the previously mentioned strategies we will have to expand our definition of the influencer as one of the participating parties. While their role as a celebrity with strong PSRs with their audience still stands, there is one important aspect to their persona that has not been mentioned before - they are a brand.

Personal branding has been a subject of discussion thanks to social media. Since a personal brand is generally defined as “the practice of marketing oneself to society” (Johnson

2017), it is independent of the person’s reach or status as an influencer as the simple act of publicly using social media and projecting one’s image means that most of us have a personal brand. However, with influencer’s this branding goes a step further.

YouTube is a source of income and the influencer’s brand is therefore a source of their income - for bigger channels even their only source of income. The influencer status therefore becomes a job and the channel a business venture (Burgess & Green, 2008: 56-57). And since

YouTubes ad revenue is directly dependent on ad views, the larger the channel grows in terms of viewers, subscribers and engagement, the more ad revenue the YouTuber makes.

And the revenue acquisition does not end with YouTube monetisation - as the influencer’s audience grows, they might use their platform to acquire additional revenue streams connected to it, or even expand to other platforms allowing content monetisation. And much like affiliate advertising, these sources of incom are being promoted by the influencer -

82 making affiliate advertising not an outlier in the influencer’s content, but rather a part of a larger body of promotional texts inserted within their video.

I have identified four main categories of promotion common in the videos connected to different promotional goals. Influencer platform promotion, influencer cross-platform promotion, paid content promotion and 3rd party promotion. The first 3 generate profit for the influencer, whether it is directly or indirectly by increasing their engagement and generating exposure for their brand, while the 4th option does not generate profit for the influencer, but for a 3rd party.

Platform promotion is aimed at raising the engagement of the audience with the content, as higher engagement is directly linked to YouTube algorithm promoting the video and therefore generating more profit for the influencer. It is also aimed at current audience retention. These strategies include mainly asking the audience to like the video, comment on it, subscribe to the channel and turn on the notifications, watch more videos from the channel or share the video with other viewers. This type of self-promotion is very common and the phrase “like and subscribe” or its modification has become a sort of a universal sign-off for many creators. The promotional goal is therefore to grow and sustain the platform.

Cross-platform promotion is then aimed at helping the influencer’s brand grow outside of YouTube by asking the audience to interact with their other social media. Most commonly it includes the link to them or a request to subscribe, but sometimes the influencer deliberately creates content relating to the video but only accessible on other platforms, such as extra footage or polls. They also often recommend their other social media promising more interactions with their viewers via these channels, responding to private messages etc.

Promotional goal is to grow the influencer’s digital brand across other platforms.

Paid content promotion involves promotion of any product or service with monetary value, most often including merch, tour tickets or various websites with subscriptions to

83 premium content or donations, such as Patreon or KoFi. The promotional goal there is the most straight-forward - direct money acquisition,

3rd party promotion then, apart from affiliate advertising, includes shout-outs or recommendations of other products or brands, most commonly other influencers. It does not include simply giving credit but must include a request to interact with the other party such as buying the product or subscribing to a channel and therefore possibly generating revenue. The promotional goal is to benefit a 3rd party.

Self-promotion is more common than 3rd party promotion, with paid content promotion being slightly less common than platform and cross-platform promotion (Figure

43).

Every single video in my dataset includes at least one type of promotion additionally to affiliate advertising, the marketing segment is therefore never a standalone promotional occurrence. However, most include more than one type with seven videos including all four and over half of the videos at least three (Figure 44).

Figure 43: number of occurrences of each persuasion type

Figure 44: number of persuasion types occurring per video

In Figure 45 below we can see an example of a video description with all the types of promotion present and how they co-occur with affiliate advertising.

Affiliate advertising

Paid content - merch

Platform - subscribe

3rd party - shoutouts

Cross platform - premium content

3rd party - shoutout & affiliate link

Cross platform - link

Figure 45: types of promotion in a comment section (Bobby Duke Arts, 2019)

As apparent, the influencer is no stranger to promotion. Only a small part of the description box is of a descriptive character, the rest is dedicated to various types of promotion. This is a very common sight; description boxes rarely ever serve for purely video description as YouTube includes hovering over the video to display preview functionality and descriptions are therefore mostly obsolete. They rather make use of the text format to supplement promotion with hyperlinks, which are also an integral part of affiliate advertising, as we have seen throughout the analysis.

4.3.1. Affiliate Persuasion Goals

Now, where does affiliate advertising fit into this classification? The obvious answer would be 3rd party promotion since the advertiser is a 3rd party and the segment an endorsement of their product or service. But this is not entirely true - as I have mentioned in the category description, 3rd party promotion, when including shoutouts or non-sponsored product recommendation, typically generates revenue for the other party and not the influencer. Affiliate advertising, meanwhile, generates profit for both the advertiser and the influencer. And not in the way a TV ad would generate profits to the actors, but as previously mentioned, affiliate deals are commission based and the influencer’s revenue is therefore directly tied to their audiences accepting the offer. I would therefore argue that affiliate advertising is a sort of meta-promotional strategy where a third-party promotion is simply a tool used to achieve self-promotion, which is the affiliate’s ad’s primary objective. This is supported by the other concepts this thesis has discussed thus far - the persuasion strategies, the importance of PSRs, the placement of the advertisement or even the influencer’s positioning.

Let us begin with the videos’ structure, especially the disclosures. I have already highlighted the common practice of referring to the affiliate as a sponsor, despite that label not being entirely accurate. One thing that the label achieves, however, is bringing awareness to the monetary nature of the relationship while framing the influencer as a passive beneficiary rather than an active party, unlike alternative labels such as partner, or affiliate.

Now combining this with the positioning theory, the label sponsor also establishes the advertiser’s benevolence in supporting the channel. The audience is then put on the same level and presented with an option to take up the advertiser’s benevolent offer, which they will

87 profit from, and also support the channel in the process. However, while being often presented as an afterthought, the channel support is the main goal for the influencer, as they have no personal investment in the advertiser’s brand prospering.

Another example is the audience’s partial forgiveness of dishonesty about the product.

When we recognise the product promotion as a secondary goal, the focus becomes the influencer’s honesty about their motivations accepting the deal, which is sometimes negotiated by the influencer justification strategy. But as was demonstrated by the examples of the comment section under a R:SL video in the previous chapter, the audience is aware of those motivations even without the persuasion strategy present.

However, what proves the theory of meta-promotion is the existence of the support request promotional strategy. The influencers overtly admit to this dynamic and use their

PSRs with the audience, and while they may position themselves as the animator for most of the segment, seemingly relaying the message from the advertiser to their audience and being a third party, the final admission that taking up the offer would directly benefit them re- contextualises the rest of the advertisement.

I believe that this is the main thing that makes affiliate advertising effective. The influencer is, by their nature, a master marketer. The social media space is so saturated with content that without self-promotion and building a strong brand it is impossible to succeed; at least in a the long-term, disregarding scoring one or two viral videos. Influencers, while usually not formally educated in marketing strategies, cannot be considerate marketing amateurs. The ones successful enough to meet the requirements for affiliate deals are well- versed in promotion and well-acquainted with their audiences. They then employ their existing persuasion skills that are highly based on their PSR with their audience and supplement the logos-based selling points provided by the advertiser with their own ethos and pathos strategies to personalise the sales pitch to their audiences.

This is also the reason why the influencers readily distance themselves from the advertiser by their positioning, or strategies such as influencer justification - it is not detrimental to them that their audiences realise that their goals are different from the advertiser’s. In fact, it benefits them as another promotional strategy. Viewers that may otherwise not be interested in the product or service are more likely to take up the offer in order to support the influencer.

4.4. Summary

In this chapter we explored the positioning theory. The influencers, being the sole animators, construct positions not only for themselves, but also the advertiser and the audience. The most common narrative is to position the advertiser as a benefactor offering both the audience and the influencer an advantageous deal, the influencer as being thankful for this offer and extending it towards the audience and the audience as both a possible benefactor and a beneficiary. Furthermore, the advertiser is positioned as offering a solution for a hypothetical problem both the influencer and the audience face while providing additional benefits in the process (commission to the influencer, free trial etc. to the audience). This influencer then attempts the speech act to make the audience accept the offer since by refusing they would not only miss out on a good deal, but additionally refuse to support the influencer.

Furthermore, this chapter categorised persuasion strategies the influencers employ based on the rhetoric triangle. We have identified 14 unique strategies, 5 of which are likely

(co)authored by the advertiser and the rest are then created by the influencers themselves.

Vast majority of the segments appeal to both ethos and logos. Logos and some ethos strategies are provided by the advertiser to detail and demonstrate the product and lend

89 credibility to the company, while the rest of the ethos strategies are used by the influencer to promote both the advertiser and themselves and ensure audience attention.

Finally, we have discussed persuasion types and goals. The scope of the analysis was briefly extended to other promotional content present in the video and it was discovered that there are overall 4 types of promotion with different promotional goals, most of which concern the influencer’s self-promotion. Affiliate advertising is then, when compared to the categories, not true 3rd party promotion, but rather self-promotion achieved through 3rd party promotion. While the influencer endorses a 3rd party product, their main goal, that is known to their audience, is to acquire revenue.

5. Discussion and Conclusion

To conclude, this thesis analysed the language of affiliate advertising on YouTube, ranging from its genre and structure, to participant framework and finally persuasion strategies and goals.

When it comes to genre and structure of the segment, the preliminary hypothesis was partially refuted. The genre of affiliate advertising, while hybrid, has shown not to be affected by the narrower genre of the accompanying content. Advertising segments inserted into accompanying content of video reviews, art tutorials or social commentary had similar structure and were not affected by the accompanying genre beyond arbitrary connections used to transition to the segment or serve as a vehicle for ethos-based persuasion. The hybridity was rather created by the genre of advertisement being blended with the broader genre of a

YouTube video, largely defined by the parasocial relationship between the audience and the influencer’s digital self. The advertisements were therefore still narrowly targeted at the influencer’s audience.

Furthermore, confirming the preliminary hypothesis, parasocial relationships have proven to play the most important role in the effectiveness of affiliate advertising. Not only are they able to shield the influencer from criticism to certain extent, but they also allow them to position their audience more effectively as benefactors who have an option to support the creator they enjoy. While this is often presented as supporting the content itself, YouTube content is inseparable from the YouTuber and therefore encompassed by the concept of PSRs.

PSRs are also responsible for the effectiveness of the real persuasion goal of affiliate advertising. While it was not one of this thesis’ goals to discover the persuasive goal of affiliate advertising, it became increasingly clear during the analysis that while audience accepting the offer presented by the influencer is the desired outcome, the goal is not only promotion of the advertiser’s brand, but rather metapromotion of the influencer’s own brand achieved by means of third-party promotion. This is apparent mainly from positioning of the participants by the influencer and of persuasion strategies employed by them, some of which, such as support request, influencer justification or content tie-in are not in accord with 3rd party promotion.

The analysis also refuted the preliminary claim that the advertisers compromise possible production quality by collaborating with YouTubers who are marketing laypeople.

The influencers have proven to be skilled persuaders, who have built their online brand based on effective self-promotion. They have employed a wide range of persuasive strategies not provided by the advertiser’s script, modified the narrative by foregrounding their roles and constructing positions for participants and employed various levels of personalisation to negotiate their accountability and trustworthiness. Their primary content is also saturated by other types of promotion separate from affiliate advertising, which the affiliate advertising is often grouped with into promotional segments in case of pre and post-roll ads.

As for further research needed to expand on these findings, one of the variables not considered possibly affecting the results could be channel size. It has been a well-discussed topic in traditional media that YouTubers with large view and subscriber counts are often millionaires, which could, on one hand, render the narrative on requiring monetary support obsolete, but on the other hand, such channels are likely to have more dedicated following willing to provide such support. I have only two such channels in ma data (Mr. Beast - 47 mil. subscribers, shane - 21mil. subscribers) and while one of the segments is a script read with minimal personalisation, the other is an outlier, because the video includes a high expense that the affiliation is covering and the advertiser personalised their offer to the influencer based on their large following, so it is impossible to draw conclusions. However, it would be interesting to analyse how channel size and view counts affect the frequency of usage of the support request strategy, since the smaller the channel, the more likely is their ability to produce more content likely to depend on the audience taking up the offer.

Furthermore, it would be beneficial to compare affiliate advertising on YouTube to other platforms with different modes, such as podcasts or primarily photo-sharing sites, such as Facebook or Instagram. Based on my personal experience I expect YouTube influencers, similarly to podcasters, to be more open about their monetary motivations while on other social media these intentions may be more backgrounded. However, this would require further studies.

Overall, the world of online media marketing remains a complex and fascinating mixture of motivations and power-structures that deserves to be further explored. While it may get compared to celebrity endorsements and other brand deals, the influencer’s approachability allows for development of much closer PSRs with their audiences with added aspect that celebrities often lack - relatability. They are therefore able to be open about their monetary struggles and motivations behind their brand deals, which is uncommon with

92 celebrity endorsements. I fully believe that influencer advertising has the most potential to market products to younger generations, that are often blind to more traditional advertising subgenres, and as such should be focused on in the linguistic circles.

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7. Appendices

7.1. Bhatia’s Rhetorical Moves

Jazza Audible 2 x x 1 3 5 x 4

Mikaela Long Audible x x 2 x 1 3 x 4

MumboJumbo Audible x x x x 1 x x 2

Steve Mould Blinkist 3 x 2 x 1 4 x 5

Savannah

Marie CBD supplements 1 4 x 2 3 5 x x

Leon Lush Dollar Shave Club 2 x 3 x 1 4 x x

Mr. Beast Dragon City 3 x 1 x 2 4 5 6

Seth Everman Express VPN 1 x x 3 4 x 2 x

Drew Gooden Express VPN x 1 2 x x 2 3 4

Strange Aeons Function of beauty 1 x 3 2 4 x 6 5

Kurtis Conner Hello Fresh 1 4 3 x 2 5 x 6

Shane Honey x x 1 x 2 x 4 3

101

Primink Honey x 1 2 x 3 5 4 x

Moriah

Elizabeth Honey 1 x 2 x 3 4 x 5 jacksfilms Lifesum x 1 2 3 x x x 4

ChloeRoseArt Native 3 x 2 x 1 4 x 5

Blameitonjorg e Nord VPN x 1 4 2 x 3 x x

Bobby Duke

Arts Nord VPN x 1 2 x 3 5 6 4

Jay Foreman Nord VPN x 2 1 4 x 5 3 6

Angelika Oles Nord VPN 5 x 3 x 6 1 4 2

Veritasium Norton 360 x 3 2 1 7 5 4 6

Film Herald Protonmail (VPN) x x 3 2 x x 1 4

Danny Raid Shadow

Gonzales Legends x x 2 1 x 3 5 4

Raid Shadow

Ready to glare Legends x x 1 x 2 4 x 3

Raid Shadow

Pyrocynical Legends x x 1 x 2 4 x 3

Raid Shadow

Logdotzip Legends x x 3 2 1 4 x 5

Repzion RayCon earbuds x 1 4 x 3 2 6 5

Roomie

Official RayCon earbuds 4 x 1 x x 3 x 2

HauteLeMode RayCon earbuds x x 3 1 2 5 x 4

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Knowing

Better Skillshare 3 1 2 x x 4 x x

Tom Harlock Skillshare 3 x 1 4 2 5 x x

Sauce Stache Skillshare x x 1 x 2 x 4 3

Sarah

Hawkinson Skillshare 2 x 1 x 3 5 4 6

HulloAlice Skillshare 3 x 1 x 2 4 x 5

I’mAllexx Squarespace x x 2 1 x 4 x 3

Kel Lauren Squarespace 3 x x 2 1 4 5 6

Mango street Squarespace x x 1 2 x x x x

Sierra Shultzie Thread up 4 x 3 1 x 2 x 5

The Icing

Artist Trade Coffee x 2 3 4 1 5 x 6

Median: 3 1 2 2 2 4 4 4

Occurence 18 12 34 18 28 31 16 31

Average 2.5 1.83 2.06 2.11 2.43 3.94 4.13 4.35

7.2. Transition

7.2.1. Transition Into the Segment

Channel Position Disclaimer Transition in Details " I just want to thank logo + "before we get to Angelika Oles pre-roll Nord VPN for visual + verbal (CH) the video" sponsoring this video" “researching online "this video is brought to mysteries can sometimes Blameitonjorge pre-roll verbal (segue) you by Nord VPN" require a little bit of security that's where

103

Nord VPN comes in”

Bobby Duke "I'd like to thank today's Swithch from b-roll to mid-roll visual + verbal (segue) Arts sponsor" voiceover "today's video is being ChloeRoseArt mid-roll kindly sponsored by visual scene change Native" "Let's talk about today's "but before we get into Danny Gonzales pre-roll sponsor Raid Shadow visual + verbal (CH) it" + facecam -> b-roll Legends" scene change + "you "everything I'm about to can't believe anything say about today's you see on the internet . . Drew Gooden post-roll sponsor . . . before I visual + verbal (segue) . except for everything started using I'm about to say about expressvpn" today's sponsor" "this video is sponsored fake video buffering then Film Herald mid-roll visual by Protonmail" scene change "I just want to say a huge logo + "so before we get shout-out to our sponsor HauteLeMode pre-roll visual + verbal (CH) any further into the for today's video who are video" ray con RayCon" logo + "before I go into kind of my review of "the sponsor of this HulloAlice mid-roll visual + verbal (CH) these paints I do want to video is Skillshare" take a moment and thank the sponsor of this video" YouTube visual tag + I’mAllexx pre-roll "this video is sponsored visual Title card by Squarespace" YouTube tag + "today's logo + "so unlike all the jacksfilms post-roll video is sponsored by visual + verbal (segue) other things I actually Lifesum” have a good gift for you" "the more you sign up Jay Foreman post-roll the more we get to do visual scene change mapmen" facecam -> b-roll + "it's way more expensive than "Thanks to Audible for I thought it would be . . . Jazza mid-roll visual + verbal (segue) sponsoring this video" which is why I'm really glad that this video is sponsored by audible” "I wanna thank our Kel Lauren post- roll sponsor for today's video visual logo which is Squarespace"

104

“You can make it if you just work hard enough and market your business “This video was brought Knowing Better post-roll visual + verbal (segue) properly. A skill you can to you by Skillshare.” learn by going to skl.sh/knowingbetter11.” + Skillshare title card title card scene change + "well those videos made no sense right guys but "let's hear it from a word Kurtis Conner post-roll visual + verbal (segue) you know what does from our sponsor" make sense eating good food for a reasonable price" Dollar shave club logo + "today's sponsor Dollar "I am grateful that they're Leon Lush mid-roll Shave Club" visual + verbal (segue) back . . . and speaking of

grateful" #ad change from "Thanks to our sponsor gameplay to facecam + Logdotzip mid-roll visual + verbal (CH) Raid Shadow Legends" "now a quick word from our sponsor" Mango street post-roll "ad break" visual Title card+scene-change facecam to B-roll + "it really makes all the difference to have "today's video is something fun to keep Mikaela Long post-roll visual + verbal (segue) sponsored by Audible" you company . . . how convenient that today's video is sponsored by Audible" Moriah " this video is sponsored mid-roll visual logo b-roll to facecam Elizabeth by Honey" scene change + "before we go any further" "how "I need to tell you about much money does the Mr. Beast mid-roll the sponsor of the video visual + verbal (segue) winner get seventy Dragon City" thousand dollars which is why dragon city is the sponsor of this video" title card + "this is this is "sponsored segment" gonna be quite difficult title card + "it's time for and while I go through MumboJumbo mid-roll visual + verbal (CH) a message from our that mental hardship it's sponsor" time for a message from our sponsor" "honey is today's Title card + "real quick Primink mid-roll visual + verbal (CH) sponsor" before we continue"

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"they've decided to "but before that" + b-roll Pyrocynical pre-roll visual + verbal (CH) sponsor me" footage change "I did want to thank our Facecam to B-roll + "so Ready to glare pre-roll sponsor that is raid visual + verbal (CH) however before we get shadow legends" into the video" YouTube tag + "special thanks to our incredible "but before we begin any Repzion pre-roll sponsor today and I verbal (CH) further in this video" mean incredible sponsor RayCon" "this video has been Roomie Official mid-roll visual scene change sponsored by Raycon" "I just want to thank Sarah logo + "but before we get pre-roll SkillShare for visual + verbal (CH) Hawkinson further into the video" sponsoring this video" YouTube visual tag + Sauce Stache mid-roll "today's video is visual Skillshare title card sponsored by Skillshare" Lengthy explanation "but before I get started Savannah Marie pre-roll including the word verbal (CH) here" "sponsor" "This video is sponsored Seth Everman pre-roll visual title card by Nord VPN" "this video is sponsored Shane pre-roll visual title card by honey" logo + "in order to test out these clothing hacksand just bring some "ThredUP is actually the Sierra Shultzie pre-roll visual + verbal (segue) new life into my sponsor of this video" wardrobeI ordered some new-to-me clothes from ThredUP #ad + " I want to tell you how the sponsor of this Steve Mould post-roll visual b-roll to facecam + logo video is helping me with that . . . Blinkist" “I need to tell you about facecam to b-roll + "but Strange Aeons pre-roll this week's sponsor visual + verbal (CH) before we get into it Function of Beauty" logo facecam to b-roll + "I want to see if it's "thanks so much to trade gonna work and thanks The Icing Artist mid-roll coffee for sponsoring visual + verbal (segue) so much to trade coffee this week's video" for . . . supplying us with coffee to test this hack out”

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"And I will never apologize for it a list of other things that I will never apologize for "I will never apologize includes but is not Tom Harlock pre-roll for . . . being sponsored verbal (segue) limited to Bullying you if by Skillshare" you deserve it saying things purely for attention and being sponsored by Skillshare" "this portion of the video logo scene change video Veritasium post-roll is sponsored by Norton visual transition 360"

7.2.2. Transition Out of the Segment

Channel Position Disclaimer Transition out Details " I just want to thank scene change + "and now Angelika Oles pre-roll Nord VPN for visual + verbal let's get back into the sponsoring this video" video"

"this video is brought to Title card of a video Blameitonjorge pre-roll visual you by Nord VPN" "chapter"

Switch from facecam to Bobby Duke "I'd like to thank today's mid-roll visual + verbal B-roll + "alright guys Arts sponsor" back to the video "today's video is being "i'm going to continue ChloeRoseArt mid-roll kindly sponsored by verbal opening my next boxes." Native" "Let's talk about today's face-cam -> b-roll + "and Danny Gonzales pre-roll sponsor Raid Shadow visual + verbal now let's complain so . . Legends" ." "everything I'm about to Scene change + "I'm so say about today's glad I make my clone do Drew Gooden post-roll sponsor . . . before I visual + verbal all the brand deals for started using me" expressvpn" "this video is sponsored Scene change+ "now Film Herald mid-roll visual + verbal by Protonmail" back to the video" "I just want to say a huge shout-out to our sponsor Scene change + "so . . . HauteLeMode pre-roll visual + verbal for today's video who are let's get into it" ray con RayCon"

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"and now let's talk about "the sponsor of this HulloAlice mid-roll verbal what I think about these video is Skillshare" paints"

YouTube visual tag + I’mAllexx pre-roll "this video is sponsored verbal "so basically" by Squarespace" YouTube tag + "today's jacksfilms post-roll video is sponsored by verbal "right so" Lifesum "the more you sign up Jay Foreman post-roll the more we get to do - end of video mapmen"

"Thanks to Audible for Jazza mid-roll verbal "so" sponsoring this video"

"I wanna thank our Kel Lauren post- roll sponsor for today's video verbal "so aside from that" which is Squarespace"

This video was brought Knowing Better post-roll visual + verbal Fade to black + "now" to you by Skillshare.

"let's hear it from a word Kurtis Conner post-roll visual scene change from our sponsor"

"today's sponsor Dollar editing transition change Leon Lush mid-roll Shave Club" visual + verbal of camera angle + "so"

facecam to gameplay "Thanks to our sponsor Logdotzip mid-roll visual + verbal change + "allright back Raid Shadow Legends" to the numbers" Fade to black scene Mango street post-roll "ad break" visual + verbal change + "so"

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b-roll to facecam + "now if you'll excuse me I am "today's video is Mikaela Long post-roll visual + verbal just going to sponsored by Audible" break continuity and do my outro"

facecam to B-roll + Moriah " this video is sponsored mid-roll visual + verbal "okay let's get back to Elizabeth by Honey" painting"

"I need to tell you about scene change "and back Mr. Beast mid-roll the sponsor of the video visual + verbal to hide and seek " Dragon City"

"sponsored segment" "anyone who just skipped title card + "it's time for MumboJumbo mid-roll verbal that missed me doing jiu- a message from our jitsu" sponsor"

"honey is today's Glitching effect into Primink mid-roll visual sponsor" black "now on with the video" "they've decided to Pyrocynical pre-roll visual + verbal + b-roll change to sponsor me" facecam "I did want to thank our Ready to glare pre-roll sponsor that is raid visual Facecam to b-roll shadow legends" YouTube tag + "special thanks toour incredible Repzion pre-roll sponsor today and i verbal "so" mean incredible sponsor RayCon" "this video has been Scene change+ "let's Roomie Official mid-roll visual + verbal sponsored by Raycon" continue the video" "I just want to thank Sarah "Okay so on to the pre-roll SkillShare for verbal Hawkinson medical advice" sponsoring this video" YouTube visual tag + camera angle change + Sauce Stache mid-roll "today's video is visual + verbal "so like I said" sponsored by Skillshare" Lenghty explanation “now we can finally get Savannah Marie pre-roll including the word verbal started here” "sponsor" "This video is sponsored fade to black and scene Seth Everman pre-roll visual + verbal by Nord VPN" change + "okay so"

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"this video is sponsored Fade to black + video Shane pre-roll visual by honey" chapter title card

"ThredUP is actually the video transition + Sierra Shultzie pre-roll visual + verbal sponsor of this video" "allright, so"

#ad + " I want to tell you how the sponsor of this Steve Mould post-roll visual #ad and logo disappear video is helping me with that . . . Blinkist" " I need to tell you about scene change + "and now Strange Aeons pre-roll this week's sponsor visual + verbal back to the video" Function of Beauty"

"thanks so much to trade The Icing Artist mid-roll coffee for sponsoring visual + verbal logo disappears + "so this week's video"

"I will never apologize Tom Harlock pre-roll for . . . being sponsored verbal "back to it" by Skillshare"

" this portion of the Veritasium post-roll video is sponsored by - end of video Norton 360"

7.3. Persuasion Strategies

Channel Logos Ethos Pathos detailing endorsement hypothetical influencer justification anecdote Angelika Oles personal recommendation detailing credentials Blameitonjorge comparison content tie-in X detailing endorsement humour demonstration support request anecdote Bobby Duke Arts content tie-in

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detailing endorsement anecdote ChloeRoseArt comparison detailing credentials humour Danny Gonzales demonstration personal recommendation hypothetical

Drew Gooden detailing demonstration personal recommendation humour detailing credentials hypothetical demonstration humour Film Herald comparison detailing endorsement humour demonstration credentials comparison personal recommendation HauteLeMode content tie-in detailing demonstration endorsement hypothetical HulloAlice personal recommendation detailing credentials humour I’mAllexx demonstration content tie-in detailing credentials jacksfilms demonstration endorsement X detailing credentials humour Jay Foreman support request skit detailing endorsement hypothetical demonstration credentials personal recommendation influencer justification Jazza content tie-in detailing endorsement hypothetical demonstration credentials Kel Lauren impartiality claim detailing content tie-in humour Knowing Better demonstration support request hypothetical detailing endorsement Kurtis Conner demonstration impartiality claim X detailing endorsement humour demonstration personal recommendation Leon Lush impartiality claim detailing endorsement anecdote demonstration credentials Logdotzip personal recommendation

Mango street detailing credentials skit detailing endorsement humour demonstration personal recommendation Mikaela Long content tie-in detailing endorsement hypothetical demonstration personal recommendation humour Moriah Elizabeth content tie-in

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detailing endorsement demonstration influencer justification Mr. Beast content tie-in X demonstration endorsement humour content tie-in MumboJumbo audience participation request detailing endorsement hypothetical demonstration personal recommendation audience participation Primink content tie-in detailing endorsement humour Pyrocynical demonstration support request detailing endorsement demonstration personal recommendation Ready to glare comparison X detailing endorsement X demonstration support request Repzion comparison detailing hypotheticals demonstration humour Roomie Official comparison X detailing demonstration endorsement hypothetical Sarah Hawkinson personal recommendation detailing endorsement demonstration personal recommendation content tie-in Sauce Stache audience participation request X comparison endorsement anecdote credential influencer justification Savannah Marie content tie-in demonstration endorsement humour credentials Seth Everman personal recommendation detailing endorsement X Shane demonstration detailing credentials anecdote comparison personal recommendation Sierra Shultzie content tie-in detailing endorsement anecdote demonstration credentials Steve Mould personal recommendation detailing endorsement X credentials Strange Aeons personal recommendation detailing endorsement X The Icing Artist demonstration credentials

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content tie-in

detailing endorsement humour demonstration personal recommendation hypothetical Tom Harlock credentials detailing endorsement X Veritasium demonstration credentials

7.4. Promotion Types

Channel Platform Cross-platform Paid content 3rd party

Angelika Oles 1 1

Blameitonjorge 1 1 Bobby Duke Arts 1 1 1 1

ChloeRoseArt 1 1

Danny Gonzales 1 1 1

Drew Gooden 1 1 1

Film Herald 1 1 1

HauteLeMode 1 1

HulloAlice 1 1 1 1

I’mAllexx 1 1 1 1

jacksfilms 1 1 1

Jay Foreman 1 1

Jazza 1 1 1

Kel Lauren 1 1 1

Knowing Better 1 1 1 1

Kurtis Conner 1 1 1 1

Leon Lush 1 1 1

Logdotzip 1

Mango street 1 1 1 1

Mikaela Long 1 1 Moriah Elizabeth 1 1 1

Mr. Beast 1 1 1

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MumboJumbo 1

Primink 1 1

Pyrocynical 1 1 1

Ready to glare 1 1 1

Repzion 1 1

Roomie Official 1 Sarah Hawkinson 1 1 1

Sauce Stache 1 1 1 Savannah Marie 1 1 1 1

Seth Everman 1 1

Shane 1

Sierra Shultzie 1 1 1

Steve Mould 1 1 1

Strange Aeons 1 1

The Icing Artist 1 1 1

Tom Harlock 1 1

Veritasium 1

Sum: 34 33 23 13

Abstract

The thesis is a discourse analysis of affiliate advertising on YouTube. It adapts a heterogenous framework with concepts from not only linguistics, but also marketing and sociology to adapt to the socio-cultural context of social media discourse. The main focus of the analysis are 39 YouTube videos from varied creators containing affiliate advertising segments from different advertisers.

It consists of three main chapters, the first focusing on genre and structure. It introduces affiliate advertising as a hybrid genre of advertising and YouTube video, which blends the communicative purpose of persuasion with the purpose of fostering parasocial relationships between the influencer and their audience. This chapter then also explores the way the advertising segment is integrated into the surrounding content and the conventions of its inner structure.

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The second chapter focuses on the participation framework, analysing the relationships of the participant and the roles the influencer and the advertiser play in the production of the video. It also introduces the concept of parasocial relationships and the influencer’s idealised digital self.

The final chapter is then concerned with persuasion. The first part is dedicated to positioning theory, explaining how the influencer position the previously introduced participants to create a narrative that aids in their persuasion and subsequently force a speech act. The second part then categorises persuasion strategies used in the dataset and identifies the influencer’s main persuasion goal.

The analysis concludes that even though the advertisement is commissioned by the advertising company and should therefore be 3rd party promotion, all the data suggest, that the influencer’s main goal is to achieve self-promotion and 3rd party promotion is a secondary goal.

Abstrakt Tato magisterská práce analyzuje diskurz affiliate reklam na YouTube. Využívá k tomu rámec různorodých konceptů nejen z oblasti jazykovědy, ale i marketingu a sociologie, aby obsáhla sociokulturní kontext diskurzu sociálních médií. Středobodem analýzy je soubor třiceti devíti

YouTube videí různých tvůrců, která obsahují reklamy od různých zadavatelů.

Tělo práce je rozděleno na tři hlavní kapitoly, první z nichž se soustředí na žánr a strukturu.

Představuje affiliate reklamy jako hybridní žánr mezi reklamou a YouTube videem, který mísí přesvědčovací komunikační účel s účelem podporovat sociální vztahy mezi influencery a jejich publikem. Tato kapitola také zkoumá způsob, kterým jsou reklamy integrovány do okolního obsahu a konvence jejich vnitřní struktury.

Druhá kapitola se zaměřuje na účastníky diskurzu, jejich vztahy a role, které influencer a zadavatel hrají při produkci reklamního segmentu. Také představuje koncept parasociálních vztahů a influencerova idealizovaného digitálního já.

Poslední kapitola se poté zabývá přesvědčováním. První část je věnovaná teorii pozic a analyzuje, jak influenceři vytvářejí pozice pro sebe i ostatní účastníky, aby vytvořili narativ, který jim

115 napomáhá v přesvědčování, a tak se pokusili o řečový akt. Druhá část kapitoly poté kategorizuje přesvědčovací strategie, které se objevují v datech a identifikuje hlavní přesvědčovací záměr influencerů.

Z analýzy vyplývá, že přestože jsou reklamy placeny zadavatelem a měly by tedy být propagací třetí strany, data nasvědčují tomu, že hlavním záměrem influencerů je forma sebe-propagace a propagace třetí strany je pouze sekundárním cílem.

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