They revealed how "influencers" deceive big brands and make them lose millions

Nobody takes him by surprise the fact that influencers buy followers or love to position oneself in the face of stiff competition; what we did not know is that the lie hidden by some (too many) Instagram profiles it costs the brands a lot.

According to a study that publishes Fashion company, conducted by the cybersecurity company Cheq and the University of Baltimore, advertisers have lost about 1.3 billion euros this year, and the figure will increase in the future. This represents nearly 15% of the total invested in them. To reach this conclusion, 10,000 profiles were examined influencers and we saw that 25% of his followers were fake. 800 agencies were then contacted marketing and it was discovered that about 600 people had worked with some of them during the year. Since the followers and the love the counterfeits come out pretty cheap (about ten thousand thousand followers and about six euros the 250 love on Instagram, and the low figure if it's Twitter and Facebook) and that influencer not very famous can win on average between 200 and 500 euros, the game is round.

There are programs, like Like Wise, that use artificial intelligence to detect whether the engagement d & # 39; a influencer That's true; that is, if the number of followers, the J & # 39; Love and the comments follow a realistic proportion. "We were very surprised to see that a lot of influencers they had unreal growth patterns. We also found that about 24% of them had manipulated their engagement at some point Some have done it slightly in sponsored publications. In other, more extreme cases, the engagement it was handled up to 95%, which means that 95% of a brand's investment in it was thrown money, "explain the program's creators on the web Contractor.

In a study conducted in the United States by the Advertising Association, it was concluded that only 36% of the brands that work with influencers are satisfied With the results Now that Instagram intends to hide the love among the publications, it may seem that many will miss good deals, but the fact is that this strategy will only serve to prevent platform users from feeling psychologically pushed to see the success of the project. posts from other people "Because, to begin with, most brands do not even look love, only the followers take into account, "he says S Fashion a member of a communications agency who prefers to remain anonymous. "In reality, the cache is usually proportional to the number of followers: about 5,000 euros for one million and about 500 euros per hundred thousand followers, "he says. In the case of companies which study carefully the J & # 39; Love and the interactions of influencerIt does not matter if this information is hidden on Instagram "because customers are turning more to other measures," he says.

If you convert your Instagram profile to business (It takes two seconds to configure it from the application settings) You have access to detailed statistics about the scope of each publication, the additional visit hours and even the geographical origin public. In short, like any web page traffic tool. Companies investing in a influencer "They usually ask for screenshots of these badyzes," he says. The problem is that these metrics can also be falsified. "There is a whole network dedicated to that. There is what is usually called love farms, normally of Russian origin, which are actually robots that click on the publications of those who pay. There are also the factories, of Chinese origin; users who post comments by tens when paying", Explains our source.
One year ago, The New York Times He was conducting an investigation into a company called Devumi, the leader in the dark sector of fraudulent tracing. The American newspaper found that the company had 200,000 loyal customers. Among them, Hollywood actors, sports stars and even Twitter workers.

It seems, one of the solutions gain transparency goes through link Instagram stories to web pages. Profiles of more than 10,000 subscribers can implement it. In this way, if a influencer promote a garment or perfume, brands can know how much the audience has redirected the instagramer in use in your stores online. "Until now, when it has been implemented, the results have been surprising," says the same source. "Very famous people have redirected only a few hundred visits and people with a much more niche profile have taken thousands." The story inevitably recalls the sad case of Arii, the influencer With two and a half million followers last spring, he tried to launch his own brand and did not even sell the 36 shirts needed to start the machine.

We think that there are more than 20 million influential people in the world (that is, they have more than 10,000 followers, whether or not they work with brands) and that, if it continues, companies will invest an average of 22,000 million euros in 2022. Today These 10,000 false followers that make you a prescriber cost about 100 euros. Few professions are more lucrative.