Honest Journalism or Pay-to-Play?
In our first post we looked at the duties of auto journalists – such as serving the public interest. Additionally, they need to be impartial in their views and provide an honest assessment of the cars they cover.
However when observing the Carwow review platform, we found issues with the format that inherently fails to meet these ideals.
Conflict of interest?
Back in August 2019 carwow attracted £25m in investment led by Daimler AG, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz. Yes, Mercedes-Benz the German car giant.
This begs the question, how on earth could Carwow possibly say a bad thing about a Merc in their reviews when they’ve put an 8 figure sum in their investment pot? I don’t think they’d be happy if Carwow publicly called one of their cars a pile of garbage, even if it was true. And if they don’t, that would be going against the journalistic principle of serving the public interest.
Their practices also link back to the idea that modern publications are exploiting the audience-growing features of new communications. Allow us to demonstrate.
The link below is a review of the new Audi A1 hatchback;
Carwow conducts a large amount of auto reviews, but their primary source of income are commissions from dealerships after brokering car sales. And this is a point made clear throughout. If you don’t watch the full video, here’s a short analysis:
0:36 – ‘Click on banner on top hand screen, for new car deals’
Right off the bat, our reviewer points us towards a feature of their product before he says anything notable about the car in question. There is a pattern throughout, of the use of YouTube’s banner feature
2:40 – Audi A1 ‘interior review’
4:16 – ‘Try our carwow configurator’
6:47 – Ad interruption – Nissan car advert
Youtube’s algorithms notice I’m watching a lot of car videos. Nevertheless, more advertising revenue going into Carwow’s pockets
8:20 – ‘Watch our Car Practicality Review’
11:25 – Ad interruption
13:48 – ‘Click on banner on top left corner to see how much you can save’
Finally, he caps off the review with yet another promotion.
Note that this particular model costs around 30k with all options; which by any standard is severely overpriced for an entry-level Audi. Despite this, he still recommends ‘shortlisting’ this car. The review format seems to conflict with the necessity to get cars sold in order to generate revenue.
Is their new business model an indictment of weak auto journalism industry?
Carwow’s CEO, James Hind initially set up the site (previously named CarBuzz) to put car reviews around the web in one place . He notes we weren’t making any money on car reviews alone. Bear in mind, motoring journalists make only an average around £20k per annum . Only those with a face for TV/Streaming come into 6 figure+ salaries.
The car brokering model is where ‘the serious money’ is raised. And now the reviews are simply an entry point into the primary business model.
Adding further as observed above, the reviews on this channel relentlessly push this product onto viewers. Which is exploitative of viewers who simply searched for a car review for information on a car model, or even pure entertainment.
Compare this with AutoTraders approach in the video attached The presenter here avoids persistently mentioning any products or what the company offers, and instead makes the car he reviews the focus all the way through. No pop-up banners in sight.
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