30 million of Cristiano Ronaldo’s subscribers are mass-followers or bots, and 77% of Neymar’s subscribers are interested in music.

Influencer marketing is gaining momentum as a direction in advertising. Brands, including major global ones, appreciate the advantages of this approach to promotion. But they have decided to go further and increase the efficiency of this promotion channel.

In particular, brands have begun to understand that a large number of subscribers does not always mean that a blogger’s posts will be effective for a variety of reasons. First of all, there is a high probability of having mass-followers and bots among the subscribers. And then there is a probability that the blogger’s audience is mismatched. The real interests of subscribers can be quite distant from the topics a blogger is promoting.

AdHive has been in the influencer and advertising business for a long time now, and the experts from our team know the ins and outs of the industry. Knowing the intricacies of the market, our specialists have introduced to the platform a number of analytical tools that allow smart targeting at bloggers and provide protection against fraud in a fully automated mode.

Smart targeting at bloggers

Our AI automatically analyzes blogger’s audience and indicates the following:

- percentage of men and women;

- distribution of subscribers in different countries and cities;

- amount of those interested in music or anything else;

- distribution of subscribers by language;

Anti-fraud

AdHive team knows all about the fraud factor and took it into account when developing the basic concepts of the platform. Efficient tools have been implemented to ensure that transparency becomes an integral part of the AdHive platform. These tools automatically scan blogger’s audience and point out the following figures:

- percentage of the subscribers that consists of real people;

- percentage of mass-followers among the subscribers. After all, such a subscriber is unlikely to see a blogger’s post;

- percentage of bots;

- percentage of opinion leaders.

Fraud is a real threat to the industry and has been hampering its development ever since its inception. Many companies try to find the ways to combat fraud. For instance, Unilever, one of the world’s largest advertisers with the annual brand and marketing investment of over £5.3bn, has committed not to work with influencers who buy followers. CMO Keith Weed has urged the industry to bring increased trust, transparency and integrity to influencer marketing, and this follows Unilever’s recent pledge not to work with tech platforms that ‘incite hate, spread division or fail to protect children’.

Mr. Weed has unveiled a new policy under which Unilever will not work with any influencers who buy followers, none of Unilever’s own brands will buy followers and Unilever will prioritize partners who ‘eradicate fraud and support increased visibility and transparency’.

To clearly demonstrate how the system works and provide some tangible proof which can be translated into real world numbers, we have analyzed Instagram accounts of the world’s most famous footballers. Just look how much these results differ from the stereotypical image of their audiences to consist of male football fans.