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Very interesting article! I wonder what the ROI on these ads are considering two things: 1) the ability to buy lots of fake followers and 2) teens having very l

Very interesting article! I wonder what the ROI on these ads are considering two things: 1) the ability to buy lots of fake followers and 2) teens having very little spending money.

tomnipotent 8y ago
This is a decade old so I imagine the numbers are much higher now, but in 2007: "With an aggregate income of $80 billion, teenage consumers represent an important consumer segment in their own right. Moreover, parents spend another $110 billion on teens in key consumer categories such as apparel, food, personal care items, and entertainment." $190+ billion is a good sized market. https://www.packagedfacts.com/Teens-1493744/ https://www.packagedfacts.com/Teens-1493744/
overcast 8y ago
Advertisers have smartened up to this. Followers don't mean shit, it's all about engagement. In fact, a lot of companies are focusing on many "micro influencers" over one large influencer. They can spread their advertising dollars over a larger range of people, with higher engagement rates, than one single giant influencer with an audience they may not even care about your product(and much lower engagement rates). The bigger the following on IG, the lower % engagement. With Facebook in control now, the crackdown on fake has already begun.
- Kagerjay 8y ago
  Buying followers isn't terribly difficult, even getting fake likes as well isn't hard either. $100 goes a long way for an artifically inflated account. Not every follower is rated equally either. There are tools like followercheck which determines legitimacy of followers an influence has. It isn't that far off from fakespot for amazon reviews. I have a friend that is super insecure. I know for a fact she bought followers, 5000+ followers and 0 engagement with silly motivational posts says a lot about a person.
  - mlrtime 8y ago
    IG constantly cleans up those fake accounts[1] you buy so eventually they will go away. Look for big dips in people's following count as the rush to buy them back. 1]https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/technology/social/bieber-instagram/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/technology/social/bieber-in...
louisswiss 8y ago
You can expect to lose money on the first posts (weeding out the fakes, building a relationship, shipping product etc) but once you find someone who works well, it's easy to get a great ROI from future posts with them. To give you a rough idea, I run a small ecommerce jewellery store as a side project and a post by a micro influencer (<1000 followers) netted us over $3000 in orders. We just gave her $89 worth of jewellery. That's obviously an exception, but you can definitely build up a network of trusted partners who can get you 5-10x returns pretty consistently.
- somebodynew 8y ago
  Do people browse Instagram as a shopping experience or are those impulse purchases?
  - louisswiss 8y ago
    In that case it was probably 95% impulse purchases. If you're more of an 'expert' than an influencer (for example you're 'the car guy' on YouTube) then there's probably much more prior intent to purchase... (Information not inspiration)
  - aspaceman 8y ago
    Very impulse driven. People usually browse Instagram casually like people browse HN - for general tips, interesting videos and content, and the lifestyle of people they are interested in. So if you can get someone people look at every day to promote one of your products, and it happens that the person is looking for new shoes / jewelry / style, you can convert those into purchases.
wmeredith 8y ago
Teens have an enormous amount of disposable income, because for most of them, nearly all of their income is disposable.

Very interesting article! I wonder what the ROI on these ads are considering two things: 1) the ability to buy lots of fake followers and 2) teens having very little spending money.

tomnipotent 8y ago

This is a decade old so I imagine the numbers are much higher now, but in 2007: "With an aggregate income of $80 billion, teenage consumers represent an important consumer segment in their own right. Moreover, parents spend another $110 billion on teens in key consumer categories such as apparel, food, personal care items, and entertainment." $190+ billion is a good sized market. https://www.packagedfacts.com/Teens-1493744/ https://www.packagedfacts.com/Teens-1493744/

overcast 8y ago

Advertisers have smartened up to this. Followers don't mean shit, it's all about engagement. In fact, a lot of companies are focusing on many "micro influencers" over one large influencer. They can spread their advertising dollars over a larger range of people, with higher engagement rates, than one single giant influencer with an audience they may not even care about your product(and much lower engagement rates). The bigger the following on IG, the lower % engagement. With Facebook in control now, the crackdown on fake has already begun.

Kagerjay 8y ago
Buying followers isn't terribly difficult, even getting fake likes as well isn't hard either. $100 goes a long way for an artifically inflated account. Not every follower is rated equally either. There are tools like followercheck which determines legitimacy of followers an influence has. It isn't that far off from fakespot for amazon reviews. I have a friend that is super insecure. I know for a fact she bought followers, 5000+ followers and 0 engagement with silly motivational posts says a lot about a person.
- mlrtime 8y ago
  IG constantly cleans up those fake accounts[1] you buy so eventually they will go away. Look for big dips in people's following count as the rush to buy them back. 1]https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/technology/social/bieber-instagram/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2014/12/19/technology/social/bieber-in...

louisswiss 8y ago

You can expect to lose money on the first posts (weeding out the fakes, building a relationship, shipping product etc) but once you find someone who works well, it's easy to get a great ROI from future posts with them. To give you a rough idea, I run a small ecommerce jewellery store as a side project and a post by a micro influencer (<1000 followers) netted us over $3000 in orders. We just gave her $89 worth of jewellery. That's obviously an exception, but you can definitely build up a network of trusted partners who can get you 5-10x returns pretty consistently.

somebodynew 8y ago
Do people browse Instagram as a shopping experience or are those impulse purchases?
- louisswiss 8y ago
  In that case it was probably 95% impulse purchases. If you're more of an 'expert' than an influencer (for example you're 'the car guy' on YouTube) then there's probably much more prior intent to purchase... (Information not inspiration)
- aspaceman 8y ago
  Very impulse driven. People usually browse Instagram casually like people browse HN - for general tips, interesting videos and content, and the lifestyle of people they are interested in. So if you can get someone people look at every day to promote one of your products, and it happens that the person is looking for new shoes / jewelry / style, you can convert those into purchases.

wmeredith 8y ago

Teens have an enormous amount of disposable income, because for most of them, nearly all of their income is disposable.