With the rise of social media platforms, brands have been changing their advertising campaigns to allocate dollars to influencer marketing, where brands pay online personalities to market their products.

However, one research firm has found that mid-level influencers- those with 50K to 100K followers- tend to have about 20% fake followers. In fact, Unilever has found some of its promoters to have paid for fake followers. The company is calling for greater transparency into the industry with more measurement and oversight.