November 11, 2020

The Problem of Influencer Fraud And What To Do About It

27 minutes

A few weeks ago on the show, we talked to Emily Ho, the marketing strategist behind Authentically Social and a fashion influencer in her own right under the monicker Authentically Emmie. In that episode we talked about influencer fraud, comment pods, buying followers and the like. I even mused, “When is someone going to create a software to detect comment pods?”

Well, low and behold, I found one that not only has, but started its entire life as a tech startup to do just that for businesses and brands.

HypeAuditor has been on my radar for some time now. They’re an influencer discovery tool that allows you to search for relevant influencers across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. I found a research report they published on influencer fraud. Here are some high points:

In the U.S., 61 percent of influencer accounts show some type of fraudulent activity. That number is only slightly lower in the U.K. at 58 percent.

Oddly enough, even micro- and nano-influencers aren’t immune. Almost 50 percent of those with 1,000 to 5,000 followers show some type of fraudulent activity.

HypeAuditor did the research, so to HypeAuditor I went. CEO Alex Frolov joined me from St. Petersburg, Russia to dive into the research, explain the methodology and chat about the issues at hand.

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By Jason Falls

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