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Comment by Simulacra | Hacker News Reader

Do influencers really...influence? It seems like a lot of money is thrown at some of these folks but it's not clear that is directly leading to sales.

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Is your question tailored to anecdotes or towards industry data?

1. I can name a handful of products that I've bought because <insert some triathlete / olympian> uses them. Out of 6 or so products I've bought I've only had bad experiences with 1 of them, otherwise they all were

2. Sales tactics are basically tried and true throughout time. It's no coincidence the most effective e-commerce techniques are scarcity and social proof[0]. Genuine influencers have the ability to affect social proof on a massive scale.

3. I loathe FashionNova, but they are a grade A example of how effective influencer marking can be if done correctly at scale[1]

4. Scaling influencer marketing is a delicate balance. It's just not programatic (and never will be) like placing ads on Facebook or Google.

[0] - https://www.qubit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/qubit-resea...

[1] - https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-bites/influe...

Facebook seems somewhat interested in inserting themselves in those direct relationships. https://www.facebook.com/collabsmanager/start https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1225872907555801

Which makes a lot of sense since a lot of that has happened behind the scenes in a way that may have limited their visibility or limited their margins.

> 2. Sales tactics are basically tried and true throughout time. It's no coincidence the most effective e-commerce techniques are scarcity and social proof[0]. Genuine influencers have the ability to affect social proof on a massive scale.

I wonder if 'social proof' is easier to fake/generate on social media with Sybil attacks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack) as well as payment to real individuals to vouch for something they don't actually use

I wonder if people will/are starting not trust these measures of social proof

Maybe they're using a different definition of "social."

Surprisingly, people follow attractive people because they want to see photos of attractive people and not because they wonder what tea they drink

Anecdotally, influencing can work in certain product categories (clothes, makeup) where you would want some authoritative source to demonstrate that something looks as good as advertised.

I try to follow attractive people at times on there, but I quickly end up unfollowing them once I find that the misleading fame has gone to their head... Most of these "influencers" only post selfies or product promos and it gets really boring after 3-4 images. :(

I watch the Super Bowl for the (american) football, but the TV commercials are still effective. Much of advertising is just reminder that the product exists. Effective not because I buy what Tom Brady buys. "Influencers" are just "content providers" to get the views.

> Effective not because I buy what Tom Brady buys

Meaning ceramic underwear?

Well, they must be influencing some people, since companies have seen returns for their efforts in that space. Despite the viral stories of how 'X influencer sold only 30-40 products despite having hundreds of thousands of followers', there are quite a few more examples of it working out:

https://www.marketingweek.com/roi-look-like-world-influencer...

https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/en-gb/blog/20-influenc...

That said, I do kind of wonder about some of this myself. What percentage of an influencer's fans would already be planning to buy the product regardless of said influencer's marketing efforts?

I mean, your average gaming/TV show/music focused social media account/channel is already likely targeting people with an interest in those areas. And the more niche ones likely only appeal to the people who already bought said products anyway. The average Ceave Gaming viewer already probably owns Super Mario Maker 1 and 2, and the average TWD98 viewer is probably an avid Mario Kart fan. Wonder how many other influencers and successful channel owners have fanbases made up of existing customers/people who've already made up their mind on a product/service?

Some do. My girlfriend has purchased clothing after seeing an influencer's post on Instagram. Granted, she has to REALLY like the piece of clothing to buy it.

Regardless, it's infuriating to read hotels, airlines, clothing companies and others throwing money and freebies at people just because they have a high follower count. It's also sad to watch people from my hometown become walking advertisements -- one girl recently started shilling for Disney -- and try pushing their "brand."

It's like the modern equivalent of Tupperware parties.

I think the Fyre Festival fiasco is pretty strong evidence for the efficacy of "influencers."

In that case there was no real product to buy, the _only_ reason to try to buy the product was its advertising, more than 4,000 people did, and its advertising was almost exclusively via social media / influencers.

Absolutely they do. Not all of them, and it's officially an overcrowded market. There's a large range of what an influencer is, what he/she does, who his/her audience is, and, most importantly, how he/she is promoting your thing. But to assume that the average human being does not do things because others do them, doesn't desire to be someone different, and is in full control of his/her mind, is nothing short of foolish.

Yes. My GF and I have both purchased items that an influencer is 'marketing'. It's not so much that I've been deceived, it's more about the exposure. Some items I'm interested in and the influencer simply put it on my radar.

Exactly this. I follow a bunch of accounts that I rely on to do "cool hunting" for me, and I'm happy to purchase stuff through their affiliate links or whatever. Win-win.

That's just the basic of marketing tactics : supposedly, more you are shown a product or a brand, and more you will accept it in your life. It works any where you can display a picture, from toilet papers to Instagram stories. Influencers are only one more channel to capture people's attention

> directly leading to sales.

Like a lot of marketing and ad spend in general. Influencers (or any other media) are simply other channels to put product in front of people who no longer watch TV or read magazines.

The economics wouldn't shake out if it didn't work. Just because they don't work on you personally doesn't mean they don't work.

The Efficient Market Hypothesis gets a little fuzzy when it comes to advertising. More than a hundred years ago Wanamaker remarked that "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half", and despite all the advances brought about by the internet the situation hasn't changed all that much. It's still completely plausible that Instagram influencers can make money despite being totally useless.

I d really like to see a serious study on the effectiveness of advertising. Businesses have been spending the same % of their profits for advertising for a century. I wonder if that means the effectiveness has essentially not changed.

I wonder if that holds for national defence budgets as well. Weapons have certainly improved.

Surely, but if the effectiveness of advertising had improved , businesses would increase their reliance and their spend on it over time. While defense has no reason to , once you 've outgunned your enemies.

Lots of brands seek exposure so direct sales from an ad may not be likely. You might not be wanting to buy something in the moment but next you are looking for something you'll associate that brand.

It's quite hard to track though some progress has been made through tracking you online on longer time scales. Most people dislike this type of tracking across channels cause we really don't get much out of it besides being bombarded with ads from the same company.

You might not be wanting to buy something in the moment but next you are looking for something you'll associate that brand.

Exactly. Coca-Cola and McDonald's didn't become billion dollar companies by not advertising.

Remember folks: when a product's advertisement is showing emotion rather than aspects of the product, the product is probably poison/toxic/unhealthy/cheap crap.

That is a valid point, but also those products are available just about everywhere. Most ads I see on Instagram are some sort of subscription box-a-month club, or some fly by night t-shirt/hat company.

You're talking about brand advertising, as distinct from product advertising. It's not so much about shopping for "something" as it's about instilling an affinity, a nudge, when the choice is between your brand and something else (a competitive brand, a cheaper store brand, etc.). That is, between items that are otherwise equal(ish).

yeah, that's kind of why I half jokingly call it the Eventually Efficient Market Hypothesis

It could be like the great recession. Perhaps there are so many levels of indirection between the influencer sponsorships and actual sales that everyone assumes it's working when it's really not.

It does. We measure CPA/CPI and the numbers are way better than other not-influencer-marketing.

Yes. An influencer post can raise millions in sales for a product, like directly.

Yes. See The Bucket List Family.

The mega scale influencers like the Kardashian family definitely influence, and have created billion-dollar brands like Kylie Cosmetics.

The regular level influencers are complete nonentities. I remember a story here a while back where an "influencer" with 2 million "followers" couldn't sell 36 T-shirts.

That story needs a * because you don't know how good the t shirts were or if they were targeted to their audience.

You also dont know how good or effective the cosmetics are

I'm skeptical that the company is worth a real billion.

a cursory glance at her revenue ($300M in 2016) shows that it probably is. And this is cosmetics so, mostly profit. There are SV startups losing more than that and worth many many billions.

You might not know how good the cosmetics are until you buy them. But whether a t-shirt fits your style is plainly visible (unless they were selling plain tees). Very different product categories

I do not use social media myself, but I saw that story as it was posted here. I get the feeling that there was some bad behaviour in that particular case (while Kardashian at least has some humans).

The t-shirt account can't get past 200 comments with 2.6 million followers? Sub-0.001% engagement screams purchased followers - you typically get more than that in spam comments or shoutout-begging alone most of the time I've seen if they are humans...

I am also inclined to believe this even more so due to scrolling through the follower list for under a minute, based off usernames. Another thing is that while scrolling through, some hypermajority appear to be either India, Middle Eastern, or CIS countries, while she has never written a description in any of those - possibly the vendor was also difficult to order from or ship outside of the US or her home country otherwise.

how long before AI powered "engagement" bot nets get good enough to pass the extremely low Turing test bar required of IG follower comments?

I suspect AI wouldn't even be needed, just harvest real comments from existing high engage feeds and dump them with minor word swaps on to low engage feeds. this alone would probably take a couple years for countermeasures to respond to, assuming there is even an incentive basis to respond at all.

why do you need AI? just end your sentence with #f4f #followback

2 years ago, at least

does your adtech startup with a completely made up metric that happens to be above industry average directly lead to sales?

money still flows in though

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