SMO: How Can Instagram Deal With Fraud?

A study by Instacreener revealed that Instagrammers are increasingly resorting to fraud in multiple ways. Faced with this phenomenon, Instagram is trying to react as it can. What measures has the social network taken? Can it be the only regulator of this phenomenon? Your SMO agency will give you some answers.

More And More Robots

The ways to fraudulently obtain subscribers, or engagement through views on videos and stories, are increasingly numerous and easy to access. Multiple third-party services for purchasing followers, likes, ideas, and comments appear. It is almost impossible for Instagram to eradicate all these practices contrary to its values.

Most of the time, these accounts are managed by someone other than human beings and are inactive. We can unmask them in different ways: for example, there are accounts with no posts (or basic/non-original content) and many subscriptions. In other cases, we can find versions with commitments on their positions, frequently more significant than their number of followers.

Influencer Marketing To Study Better

The photo and video-sharing platform is the first victim of this regrettable phenomenon. But some agencies and advertisers can bear the brunt of these harmful techniques. The Instascreener company has announced colossal figures concerning the influence marketing market: the American company reports 1.9 billion dollars spent in the United States and Canada on influencers, including 1 4 billion for those on Instagram. 

However, of the money spent on influencers on Instagram, $255 million was used on accounts with fake followers. Therefore, it is increasingly difficult to be credible as influencers. So, Instagram’s environment with all these robots could be better, but that doesn’t take away the lack of insight into the fooled agencies and advertisers. Advertisers continue to use the following formula far too often by default: The result of this calculation represents the KPI used by advertisers. 

But this is no longer the main element and representative of the data developed by influencers. This indicator remains usable a second time after a check using a more precise tool. However, many tools are developing to retrieve more detailed results: sites like Hype Auditor or Influencer.io can provide you with more precise data and make you notice sudden increases in subscribers or posts that collected likes in an unfortunate way, for example.

For Lauren Dubinsky, director of The Variable, the vision for successful influencer marketing is long-term. She considers it more interesting to collaborate with creators for several posts than to appeal to them for the sale of a particular product. This is also a technique that we find more and more, with influencers who promote products (or services) of the same brand, on several occasions. We can take the example of the most followed user of the network, the footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, who collaborates with the company CLEAR.

Instagram, The Only One Who Can Answer?

The purchase of followers or commitment to third-party applications indirectly represents a loss of money for Instagram; indeed, the solutions provided by the social network around advertisements or sponsored content to gain visibility are less exploited by users.

But it is a problem for which he is not the only culprit. At the level of its algorithm, direct solutions have been considered by Instagram, but they have been circumvented each time. However, some new social network measures have indirectly contributed to its improvement.

“Brands Collabs Manager”

Despite its inability to regulate all the problems of fake and robot accounts, Instagram has still changed its use, indirectly impacting the issue. The “Brands Collabs Manager” platform, already available on Facebook, has begun to be developed on Instagram so that advertisers can contact the influencers they target and that these Instagrammers reveal their data to them in complete transparency. 

Thus, advertisers can access information about their audiences, such as their subscribers sorted by city or country or the engagement generated on their accounts. This does not primarily mean the end of platforms like HypeAuditor, because they can attribute more advanced data than this new service.

But Instagram will always have more accurate and reliable data since it is that of its application. In addition, the implementation of this service (previously available on Facebook) on Instagram came just after the camouflage of the number of likes.

The End Of Likes

The transition is complete. A few months ago, Facebook’s photo and video service platform deployed a version without displaying the number of likes. Initial feedback was mixed, especially for creators, for whom this number was crucial to collaborate with brands. But thanks to the deployment of the Facebook Brands Collabs Manager, this is no longer an issue.

Therefore, with this version without the display of likes, the interest in the illegal purchase of commitment will not be so considerable. Therefore, advertisers’ impact will be significant; if they no longer survey users who cannot justify an ethical practice concerning acquiring their audience, the latter will stop using these fraudulent applications. The end of likes, therefore, indirectly impacts the fate of bad practices on Instagram.

To Conclude

Although it will undoubtedly take time to fight against all these devices, which push users to ease and especially to break the rules imposed by Instagram, this fake influence will disappear over time. Ideally, content would be king and the user environment better. So, do not hesitate to call on our social media agency. Our SMO specialists will be happy to find the best strategy to move you forward in your digital project around social networks.

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