The online influencer bubble may be starting to burst

Shawn Knight

Posts: 15,240   +192
Staff member
In brief: The average influencer with around 10,000 followers can regularly command $200 per sponsored post. For celebrities with millions of followers, that figure can easily swell to $500,000 or more for a single endorsement.

"Online influencer" wasn’t on the list of career choices when many of us hit the job market in search of a way to make a living but for a select number of people, it’s a viable – and potentially lucrative – way to make money.

Advertisers spent roughly $500 million on influencers – celebrities, public figures and socialites with a large number of online followers – in 2015 according to Mediakix, a company that helps match brands with influencers. This year, it estimates companies could spend upwards of $8.2 billion on influencers.

Such sponsored posts could disappear just as quickly as the trend arrived, however.

Consumers are wising up to how sponsored posts work, realizing that celebrities and influencers don’t really have a personal connections with the products they are marketing. Furthermore, dishonest influencers are artificially inflating their social media follower numbers in hopes of landing more lucrative deals.

Worse yet, advertisers are having a difficult time gauging their return on investment. Aside from social media likes – which again, can be faked – there isn’t a tangible way to measure a campaign’s success or guarantee how many eyes will see a particular ad.

Some advertisers and brands are already turning away from influencers. Banana Republic, for example, is now highlighting organic posts from real-life shoppers.

Masthead credit: Social media influencer by Jacob Lund. Second photo by NicoElNino

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Advertising will always be pushed by false positive influences, no matter the source. If your product can only be sold by advertising, then it would never be worth the effort of buying. People will buy that which works. If they are not sure, they risk purchasing based on advertising. And hope that advertising is not a complete lie hiding in what would otherwise be over-hype. They main advertisements that are not real are the ones being pushed every hour.

And then Advertisers wonder why we start ignoring/blocking them. We are tired of their lies and deceptions!
 
Actually, there IS a way to measure the success or failure of an ad... take your revenue pre-ad and your revenue post-ad adjusted for projections, etc... it's not exact, but it does tend to work... it's what smart companies have been doing since advertising began...

If you were making $10 million per month before you started an ad campaign, and begin making $20 million per month after, you can judge the ad a success...
 
Actually, there IS a way to measure the success or failure of an ad... take your revenue pre-ad and your revenue post-ad adjusted for projections, etc... it's not exact, but it does tend to work... it's what smart companies have been doing since advertising began...

If you were making $10 million per month before you started an ad campaign, and begin making $20 million per month after, you can judge the ad a success...
unless you spent $10 million on advertising :D
 
Oh, the sheeple that glam onto the "influencers" will always be there...for whatever reason they "think" they are friends with these people because they "follow" them on twitter/fakebook/instagram.
 
Advertising will always be pushed by false positive influences, no matter the source. If your product can only be sold by advertising, then it would never be worth the effort of buying. People will buy that which works. If they are not sure, they risk purchasing based on advertising. And hope that advertising is not a complete lie hiding in what would otherwise be over-hype. They main advertisements that are not real are the ones being pushed every hour.

And then Advertisers wonder why we start ignoring/blocking them. We are tired of their lies and deceptions!
I feel like advertisements work best when your product is in a segment that’s still growing. If consumers don’t know what they want because they’re new to the market, then advertisements can be very successful. In these conditions, it effectively gives a first impression to the sector, your company, and your product.

However in many cases, marketing isn’t effective. The most obvious cases are companies with no advertisements who still continue to expand. These include companies such as Costco, In-N-Out, and Tesla.
 
Guess all these influencers will have to go back to their original day job......IG ho'ing.... "living their best life!"
 
Actually, there IS a way to measure the success or failure of an ad... take your revenue pre-ad and your revenue post-ad adjusted for projections, etc... it's not exact, but it does tend to work... it's what smart companies have been doing since advertising began...

If you were making $10 million per month before you started an ad campaign, and begin making $20 million per month after, you can judge the ad a success...

This is true if they only use one advertising source.
 
However in many cases, marketing isn’t effective. The most obvious cases are companies with no advertisements who still continue to expand. These include companies such as Costco, In-N-Out, and Tesla.
Here in Southern California there are In-N-Out advertisements on TV. I happened to have seen three on Monday.
 
Influencer like kingpin..?

Who is paid huge amounts and given tons of free stuff... so he can destroy hardware nonchalantly in OCing. And whom is tied-at-the-hip with EVGA. That type of influencer..?

Or the type, that work alliances and founded EVGA with Intel & Nvidia's money, to subsidize their products, for air of superiority. (EVGA can't survive on it products.)


 
There was a new item on a person who insisted on a flight upgrade due to the self-proclaimed status as influencer -- I seem to recall that person was banned from future flights on that airline.

I see those touting "Influencer" as a personal label as narcissistic --
 
Advertisers created the influencers. Before YouTube, it was the likes of Oprah Winfrey who could destroy the US beef burger industry in a single episode of her show. Now it's relative unknowns on the internet with a captive audience of lemmings. I'd like to see this colossal misuse of money collapse but of course it won't. Advertisers will spend money, make mistakes and charge consumers more.
 
Youtube itself is robbing advertisers. I see the same adds over and over no matter how many times I dislike. Most times I don’t have the option to dislike. Youtube don’t want to know. Then the ad changes, but spammed over and over.
Yes not the exact topic of article....youtubers aresalesmen. You have to wade through the hype to get the real reviews.
 
Youtube itself is robbing advertisers. I see the same adds over and over no matter how many times I dislike. Most times I don’t have the option to dislike. Youtube don’t want to know. Then the ad changes, but spammed over and over.
Yes not the exact topic of article....youtubers aresalesmen. You have to wade through the hype to get the real reviews.

I guess my blocker(s) still work. I can't remember the last time I saw an ad on Youtube. ;)
 
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