The New Currency: Trust Over Numbers

The Illusion Of Influence

In today’s digital world, social media and online marketing, popularity is often measured by numbers. It's the number of followers, likes and comments that establish how important or famous the account is. More the followers count, more people trust it and that attracts more brands and sponsorships too. This has led to growing competition among influencers and also brings the problem of fake followers and inflated engagement.

The Scale Of The Problem

Fake followers are usually bot accounts or inactive profiles. They are purchased from online services that promise to increase followers count quickly. Influencers and businesses sometimes use fake followers to impress brands and advertisers. A very recent study found that 37.2% of influencer audiences show fake or suspicious signals. Also, there are some estimates which point that between 15-30% followers across the Instagram platform are fake or inactive.

AI As The New Gatekeeper

Many companies now use AI and analytical tools to detect fake followers and fake engagements. These tools analyze various aspects of an account to determine whether its audience is genuine or not.

Decoding Authenticity: The Tools Behind The Shift

HypeAuditor is the most widely used influencer marketing analytical tool. It checks the accounts of followers with no profile photos or very few posts. It estimates how many followers are real, suspicious or bots and if comments look automated or repetitive. It evaluates 68 million social media accounts across Instagram, YouTube and others and its machine-learning model analyzes 53 behavioral patterns to distinguish real users from bots, with 95%+ accuracy.

Modash has a database of 350M+ influencer profiles. It allows brands to audit influencer profiles by checking fake follower percentages, engagement rate and follower growth history. It checks the location and demographics of the followers. Modash also checks if an influencer has many followers but very low engagement, or if the follower count has suddenly risen by thousands without a viral moment.

Social Blade records daily follower numbers. If an account has a large spike in followers in a short time, it may indicate purchased followers or bot activity.

Qoruz is an Indian made AI driven influencer marketing and analytics platform. It uses AI algorithms to estimate the percentage of fake, inactive or suspicious followers. It helps to catch mismatched audiences, where an Indian influencer has many foreign followers. It provides a credibility score to help marketers quickly judge whether an influencer’s audience is genuine.

Winkl is used by brands and marketing agencies to analyze audience quality and does vetting process for the brands. It includes specific tools to help marketers identify inauthentic engagement by fake followers.

A Shift In What Matters

AI tools are the lens through which marketers can finally understand audience authenticity, which has emerged as the most crucial statistic in influencer marketing.

The Future Is Credible

These AI-powered tools are quickly gaining traction in influencer marketing, with 50-70% marketers now using them for influencer finding and campaign optimization. At the same time, about 80% of brands intend to retain or raise their influencer marketing budgets, which indicates confidence in these tools. Having a large number of followers without authenticity is futile now. Audience quality has emerged as one of the most important indicators for assessing influencer performance.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author and do not in any way represent the views of exchange4media.com.