Every third Swiss Instagram Followers is invented

Influencers are the new stars are in the sky Advertising. The business is booming. Until next year, according to the Influencer marketing Agency Mediakix to be implemented worldwide, almost 2.5 billion US dollars with the young Social Media celebrities. 30 to 40 million Swiss francs, it will be the same this year in Switzerland, with annual growth rates of 20 percent, is estimated Fabian Plüss, co-founder of the Zurich-based Influencer Agency Kingfluencers.

But there is a Problem: more and more people on instagram Followers, Likes and comments buy in the competition for partnerships and advertising deals with companies. The brands, market and Marketing harm.

A new study identifies for the first time, the extent of the fraud, a third of the Followers on the Swiss Instagram account is fake. The calculations of the US Start-ups hype auditor that is specialized in such forgeries track show. Worldwide, 46 percent of the Followers are even on Instagram fake, says company CEO Alex Frolov.

"Only real Followers that are of value"

The result is sobering. Now, the brands to beat and back to the advertisers. With artificial intelligence and smart Algorithms, the quality of Instagram is to be determined-profiles: "Because it is only an Influencer with real followers for companies and Brands valuable," says Frolov. The 33-year-old Russian has established hype auditor a year ago with a friend in St. Petersburg, the headquarters is in Indianapolis, the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana.

The database has around 250'000 users. The majority are Influencers, who claim the service is free, a small proportion of paying customers, including big names such as the consumer goods group Unilever, with brands such as Knorr, Lipton and Rexona, the music label, Universal Music, or the world's largest cosmetics manufacturer L'oréal.

Frolows Tool is not the only one, but he is convinced that his is the best to make fake Followers to find. It is suitable for all companies that work with Influencers, but not an expert want to set.

How it works? There are a few quality characteristics, one can examine Profiles: where are the Followers? And who you follow else? If you Thousands of others to follow, it is clear that there is no real Person behind it. Also suspicious it is, if the accounts of the Followers are orphaned, the Follower Numbers increased by leaps and bounds, or if someone has hundreds of thousands of Followers, but little Likes.

The algorithm of hype auditor collects the freely accessible data of Instagrammers, checks the Profiles on such characteristics and are then calculated for the Profile and quality of the core. The higher the quality of the audience of Influencers, the better. It will also take into consideration the so-called Engagement Rate, which measures the activity of the Influencers with his audience. It results from the number of Likes and comments divided by the number of Followers. One of these two Numbers is at least low, advertising customers the Finger from the Influencer.

as Measured by quality and commitment, according to Frolov, the Instagram Account of the Meme-Stars Zeki is the best in Switzerland. On court 6, you will find the skier Wendy Holdener , on place 8 of your colleagues Beat Feuz .

The Swiss PR Agency Farner works with hype auditor. "Ultimately, it's about investing in the communications budget properly," says consultant Markus Maurer. He has already experimented with Fake Accounts and I know how easily you can build with a few Tricks on Instagram an artificial followers.

He uses the Software for the selection of Influencers: "We have a relatively quick Overview. Then it comes, the Profiles of Hand check." Tools like hype auditor to be a Supplement, not a substitute for the personal interaction with Influencers.

No Problem Mason with the Russian origin of the Tools. The publicly available data would be anonymized prior to analysis, the data privacy is ensured.

projections as inaccurate

criticized Not all in the industry consider such tools as a positive. With particular skepticism the pure Influencer is countered agencies. "Dangerous" finds Daniel Koss of Yxterix. The 23-Year-old has around one hundred artists under contract and says to fake followers: "the Right Influencer not do such a thing today." So far, he had to part with therefore, only by twos. In addition, projections will be as you is hype auditor instead of to be inaccurate: "The only way to get data directly from the Influencers."

Similar to Fabian Plüss of Kingfluencers judge. Fake Followers and phony to be a Problem that his Agency now well in the grip. Also, this works only with data first-Hand. In the case of Tools such as the hype auditor, one never knows exactly what the algorithm is doing.

(Sunday newspaper)

Created: 19.05.2019, 00:24 PM