Well, I find hard to believe (remember that this is limited to Instagram and to "market influencers", none of the ones mentioned are rock stars, presidents of t

Well, I find hard to believe (remember that this is limited to Instagram and to "market influencers", none of the ones mentioned are rock stars, presidents of the US, etc. that I believe have a more transversal audience) that the total amount of followers is so large. The intended audience seems to me pretty much "narrow" at least from the few examples given on the article under "Illustrative examples of Swiss Instagram influencers". These are seemingly all fashion related, targeted to an audience (my personal estimate) of women in the 16-40 years old range, maybe even a more restricted age range. And Switzerland is not - I believe - considered an international (worldwide) reference for fashion. Of course my reasoning is based not on any data, so it may be well off, but I would have expected an even higher number of "fake" followers, not a smaller one than what the researchers found.