According to the State of Influencer Marketing 2021 report by HypeAuditor the average percent of these Instagram accounts that are involved in fraud have decreased to 8.14 percent as compared to 2019. HypeAuditor has also revealed that only 55 percent of the followers on Instagram are real people, so this basically means that the other 45 percent include bot/inactive accounts, bogus or fake followers.
Social media is definitely a place where a large social media account that has a huge following can generate a good buzz. Brands seek these accounts or influencers, who can help them with their products, but now there has been an increase in the amount of influencer fraud and of course which ever brands collaborate with them can cause a huge negative impact with their businesses. The common types of influencer frauds include, an influencer paying people to follow them on their social media accounts, which means that these followers are real and they don’t really go in interest with the influencer’s account. They don’t post comments or like their pictures and that is how you can know that, that account is a fraud. Another type is where the followers are paid to comment on the influencer’s post to make the real audience believe that the influencer has a steady audience. Another one is Pods, which are basically groups of people on social media that form some sort of alliance to comment and like on each other’s posts. Some brands unknowingly form collaboration with these Pods which when they find out has a huge negative impact on their brands in turn, these fake influencers and activities like these can cost advertisers to around a million dollar every year, and that too is the minimum amount.
According to recent reports as mentioned there has been a decrease in such activities, but even after this, it doesn’t mean that these influencer frauds number is low. One of the reasons as to why this might have happened is due to Instagram imposing restrictions, which included banning the follow and unfollow trick. The report has also mentioned that the influencer market of Instagram is expected to grow 15 percent this year and the estimated global market capitalization will be equal to $5.8 billion (which was 5.2 billion in 2019).
Read next: Study Shows Influencer Marketing/Paid Content Currently Has The Biggest Share In Digital Advertising Budgets
Social media is definitely a place where a large social media account that has a huge following can generate a good buzz. Brands seek these accounts or influencers, who can help them with their products, but now there has been an increase in the amount of influencer fraud and of course which ever brands collaborate with them can cause a huge negative impact with their businesses. The common types of influencer frauds include, an influencer paying people to follow them on their social media accounts, which means that these followers are real and they don’t really go in interest with the influencer’s account. They don’t post comments or like their pictures and that is how you can know that, that account is a fraud. Another type is where the followers are paid to comment on the influencer’s post to make the real audience believe that the influencer has a steady audience. Another one is Pods, which are basically groups of people on social media that form some sort of alliance to comment and like on each other’s posts. Some brands unknowingly form collaboration with these Pods which when they find out has a huge negative impact on their brands in turn, these fake influencers and activities like these can cost advertisers to around a million dollar every year, and that too is the minimum amount.
According to recent reports as mentioned there has been a decrease in such activities, but even after this, it doesn’t mean that these influencer frauds number is low. One of the reasons as to why this might have happened is due to Instagram imposing restrictions, which included banning the follow and unfollow trick. The report has also mentioned that the influencer market of Instagram is expected to grow 15 percent this year and the estimated global market capitalization will be equal to $5.8 billion (which was 5.2 billion in 2019).
Read next: Study Shows Influencer Marketing/Paid Content Currently Has The Biggest Share In Digital Advertising Budgets
