Can consumers trust influencers?

Influencer marketing is ubiquitous in the age of social media, and the practice continues to grow and evolve quickly. 

Years ago, brands could simply reach out to rising content creators with large followings and negotiate a deal to mention a product or promote a service. Many of these early social media influencers at the time were individual content creators lacking experience working with brands, so companies could get a lot of exposure at a much lower cost than traditional marketing channels. Even more important than exposure, brands were able to "borrow" the authenticity of these influencers to gain consumers' trust.

But as more brands started to jump on the influencer marketing bandwagon, the influencers started to change. They became more professional. The ever-increasing demand from brands led influencers started to charge higher prices, work through agencies, and find new ways of monetizing their content. Some influencers even manipulated the number of followers and engagements they had through questionable means in order to get more money from brands, such as by buying fake followers or by creating clickbaity content. In fact, people began to become "influencers" for the sake of becoming influencers, "growth hacking" their way to thousands and millions of followers in order to earn money from advertisers.

Today, marketers are well aware of these practices and can distinguish real and fake influencers, and there are many articles and digital advertising forums discussing this topic. But what about the consumers? Can they tell which influencers are still genuine?

Last year, a survey of 56,000 internet users by marketing agency UM found that only 42% of people trust bloggers and vloggers opinions of products and services, down from 54% in 2017. Despite relatively recent FTC regulations requiring influencers to clearly tag sponsored content with #ad or #sponsored, it's still often difficult for consumers to know when an influencer's opinions are genuine or bought.

This leads to the question of what direction in which influencer marketing is headed in the future. It seems like authenticity and commercialization are opposing forces. As influencers and brands become smarter and more savvy at working with each other to make money, will they lose consumers' trust? 

Is there a way for influencers to be genuine while making money at the same time, and will consumers believe that?