According to Digiday, Influencer fraud continues to be on the rise. Fake engagment on the site continues to get worst, despite efforts to crack down.
"According to Instascreener’s data, initially in May after Instagram removed the likes and comments of users from third-party apps, fake influencer engagement rates declined from 1.7% to 1% on certain accounts with the least authentic audiences. But from September to December 2019, the fake engagement rate for those accounts increased from 1% to nearly 1.2% because some influencers who report fake engagement rates were able to figure out workarounds to circumvent Instagram’s methods."
People are able to get around the algorithm's Facebook creates to detect fraud fairly quickly. Despite this, media buyers are not instructing brands to pull back. That’s reflected in Instascreener’s report: In 2019 companies spent $1.9 billion on influencer marketing in the U.S. and Canada, with $1.4 billion of that going to influencer marketing on Instagram. Yet, as much as $255 million of the $1.4 billion spent on Instagram was lavished on accounts with fake followers, per Instascreener.
Many advise clients to shift the focus of influencer use, away from immediate sales and more towards long-term brand building and engagement. For now, fake accounts and fraud continue to be on the rise.
1 comment:
Interesting stuff Jon. Forgive my ignorance, but are media buyers' compensation tied in any way to amount of ad spend of their clients? My guess is that they are, which would indicate a clear incentive misalignment--especially your point that "despite this, media buyers are not instructing brands to pull back." In other words, the people whose paycheck depends on big ad spends suggest that advertisers should not care that a significant portion of their budgets are used inappropriately...
As we get to the social portion of our corse I'm very interested to see what the ROI on these sorts of campaigns are. My intuition tells me that compared to traditional channels (especially E-Mail! ;)), influencer ROI is less attractive. I would imagine there is also a problem with attribution, although this could be mitigated with coupons and custom landing pages etc... That said, I could, maybe, potentially see this as being a low cost per impression channel if the influencer had appropriate reach and wasn't charging an exorbitant amount, but I'm skeptical (imagine that).
Thanks for the share.
Ryan
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