The Rise and Maybe the Fall of Influencers | Hacker News Reader

The Rise and Maybe the Fall of Influencers

nytimes.com

29 pointsDiabloD315 comments

The available mega influencers (Jenner and Gomez) are scarce. The dilution of brand image begins with conflicting brand associations with the same influencer. While reach is far and wide, at a great cost, the better approach would be to attach to lower level influencers that have smaller impact when their image begins to misalign with the brands. I have a hard time believing agencies haven't been utilizing multiple approaches to utilizing the varying influence across the spectrum instead of putting all their eggs in one basket with one mega influencer. I don't quite understand the point of the article and how the utility of influencers could collapse? There will always be a new face to exploit, no?

> I don't quite understand the point of the article and how the utility of influencers could collapse?

Some industries are ok with blatant sponsorship and some are not. Compare the video game industry awards (https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2016/12/02/the-good-th...) to the oscars.

People can be fickle about these things as the industries are being established. If fans decide it's unappealing to see obvious cash-ins, the 'influencer' industry may be overvalued. Whether or not they do probably has a lot to do with whether these scandals are memorable.

Also, excessive promotional campaigns can eat into the reputations of the people and brands involved, or even cause a broader loss of trust. For example, Geoff Keighley will probably be forever known as the Dorito Pope because of his over-the-top product placement for Mountain Dew and Doritos, and every video game article, review, Let's Play or shout-out that is seen as excessively positive attracts rumours that the person was paid or otherwise rewarded for doing it.

This is discounting the idea that people quickly become jaded in general to the concept of being sold shit by internet personalities. People quickly identify and begin to ignore/resist new forms of advertising, see the ever falling click-through rates of internet advertising and concepts such as "ad blindness"

It all speaks to the radioactive toxic waste that is advertising in general, and its insidious ability to poison discourse. Couching the tactics in terms like "influencers" seems pretty distasteful to me.

NYtimes questioning influencers because it undermines their own content, HA!

From the article: PewDiePie, a YouTube star who had signed deals with Disney and Google and then was discovered to have made anti-Semitic statements.

...100% bullshit smear campaign by the WSJ not mentioned...

Influencers must create trust and manage their own base, just like any other brand. The losers at the end of that stick are ad driven media outlets like NyTimes and Google. People creating content is not going anywhere and neither is the power of social media. Sure some top end influences are practically just product pushing robots, but this landscape will even out to be more genuine and niche based.

The long ugly decline of traditional media grasping at straws is not over, the revenue will continue to plummet. The title should be "The continual fall of the MSM as the internet continues to erode it's value."

you realize NYT is having record profits? because they are doing real journalism? And you also realize pewdiepie actually did make crude anti-semitic jokes? yes, WSJ over-reacted but he wasn't guiltless. Writing Holocaust/Hitler jokes isn't funny and shouldn't be tolerated.

No I don't realise that, because its not accurate.

NYTimes: Print advertising revenue in 2016 fell 16 percent, driving a 9 percent drop in total advertising revenue. For the quarter, print advertising revenue declined 20 percent. Digital advertising revenue rose 6 percent last year. Adjusted operating profit, the company’s preferred method for assessing performance, fell to $241 million last year, from $289 million in 2015. Operating profit dropped to $102 million, from $137 million.

^ Says everything you need to know about what is going on, and jokes, although crude, are jokes.

They had more subscribers added in the 3 months after trump was inaugurated than all of 2015. So those numbers are essentially fake news

https://qz.com/901684/thanks-to-trump-the-new-york-times-add...

It's not about profits, it's about power and control. For decades, even centuries, a few news outlets have been able to control the flow of public discourse. They controlled the Overton Window.

The NYT has lost a lot of control of the Overton Window, for better or worse.

There's no such thing as a topic that is out of bounds for humor, but you do have to know your audience.

yeah i mean his audience is a bunch of impressionable 12 year olds

The dream of policing young impressionable minds is simply impossible if they have an internet connection.

i didnt say anything about that. what i'm saying is if you're some 25 year old and you know you have millions of impressionable 12 year old fans. Maybe stay away from blatantly anti-semitic behavior, even if it is a poor attempt at a joke. Or be prepared to be called out by newspapers.

I can agree with that. :)

Who cares. Who cares if the face on vogue Germany isn't German, or the one on vogue US isn't American. Get over it. Who cares if people become indifferent to paid influencers.

It's part and parcel of globalism which lifted hundreds of millions out of abject poverty and gave rise to middle classes in India and China. Course we can go back to nationalistic tendencies.

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