I get the same feeling about scam penis enlargement pills- obviously someone must be buying it, because the ads keep coming, but who the hell is it?
The answer is pretty simple - they give you a reason for you to care.
Quick example:
Project Farm[1] on Youtube does product reviews. Maybe they're not the best reviews - I don't really know. They seem at least alright.
But they're constructed in such a way as to be transparent, objective, and easy to understand.
Which is why the channel has a lot of subscribers.
Now, depending on the person, "a reason for you to care" will be different. But that's part of the reason why there's so many different influencers in each area - different influencers appeal to different people.
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For example, when he tests tape, he does not put the tape down by hand. Instead he uses a roller with a fixed weight to push the tape down so that all tapes for sure have the same pressure applied
But if you aren't heavily involved with said type of tools, you'd never know so you can continue to enjoy the entertainment.
Torque Test Channel does something similar, but they're usually just testing the numbers provided by the manufacturers, and then intentionally going off the rails to break the tools.
YMMV on fixing a now 50 year old computer.
The last one I watched was about rain repellents like rainx. I'd expect to test longevity over time, under sunlight, maybe simulating rainy days.
Instead the tests had various harsh chemicals applied in succession, and a sponge friction test for some reason.
Thanks for posting that channel though, I decided I liked that guy within 5 seconds.
Note how different the platforms are which are about collaboration instead of competition and profit motive:
Wikipedia
Open Source Software
Science
They feature a peer-review process, for the privilege of publishing your information for free to everyone. And you are held to a high standard, but also you have no obligation to wake up in the morning and continue to be an influencer-expert-on-everything. You can make a small contribution and drop the mic.
That’s a gift economy. And if we had UBI, far more people would participate. Reimagine the whole system! This alternative is far healthier for society than surveillance capitalism and perpetual tribal outrage and depression across all ages.
LAWeekly wrote about it last year: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
You put a coke bottle next to some athlete, someone makes a reference to some car in some tv show, or to some product in a movie.
There are subtle and obvious ways to do it in those other mediums... The problem with "hobby" influencers is that they're supposed to be talking about those products anyway, so it's very difficult to know if they're still in the "initial phase" where they're just interested on products out of genuine interest (and purchasing it themselves), or if it's product placement :(
Would be illegal where I live, but seems to be common on IG (I don't personally use it, so idk)
§ 8th - (7) - Product placement is permitted, except in news programs and programs for political information, consumer programs, regional window programs according to Section 59 Paragraph 4, window programs according to Section 65, programs with religious content and children's programs.
The bullet points below it help narrow it down further. "Just mentioning it" is allowed, as long as you don't emphasise it too much or encourage purchase, etc.
And "just mentioning it" is fine, if you use the product as an example when talking about a certain topic, or if you mention that it exists. Which is IMO more effective than overt advertisement.
This stuff isn't new, just packaged differently for a younger audience.
They see Shaq holding a product, they "know" Shaq, so their brain automatically puts the product into the category of something they've seen someone they know using.
How effective this is is a matter of debate.
I guess this is why companies are so quick to drop celebrities that do something unpalatable. Because then the product would go into the category of something that someone I don't like uses.
the reason it works is precisely because it's not fake everything. A lot of these influencers are content creators who have built genuine followings, and are outside of their sponsor and brand deals significantly more personable than your average TV figure.
That's why a lot of these people can command such high prices per user. I know a few people in the streamer space and they can usually charge about 1$/viewer/hour for sponsored content. So a streamer with 10k viewers can make 20k just playing a sponsored game for two hours. The audiences are incredibly invested because it's people they've been following for years.
Very few people. If it makes $21B in the US, that means that it's getting an average of $50/yr out of each of us.
To be honest, I don't even know what "the dollars driving the industry" is supposed to mean. I assumed it meant $ in influencer pockets, but it's unclear from skimming the link. It could even mean "revenue estimated to have been driven by influencers."
Silver lining is the abundance of influencers lessens the stickiness of any particular brand and makes it a shorter term fad.
To quote the tshirt.. if the goal is to stop making stupid people famous (by glorifying celebrity)..
It may require the people with a variety and diversity of authentic perspectives to get off the sidelines of silence and also create content not for everyone but those who are also interested.
My sister know some perfume influencers (who knew it existed) and it's very similar.
The more professional influencers obviously get paid a rate, and might or might not get a free unit.
An influencer campaign is probably a fraction of the cost of TV commercials with an order of magnitude better attach rate.
There's a subset that are directly selling stuff either as drop shippers or affiliate marketing. They're video versions of SEO blogs. I'd put those in a different class than the ones just running ads on their existing content channels. While they might be called "influencers" they're just running ads for their sales hustle.
If the product is sold by an influencer, it will be sold as "Used", long after the "hype period" is over. This initial period of booming sales is very important for products announced trough influencers.
Paying for the influences to do the work is more expensive than the products themselves, in pretty much every case I know of.
And even for expensive products: if you send something to an influencer with the expectation to get back, it will come back used and has to be sold as B-Stock for a loss anyway. For stuff up to $200, $300 it ends up being much cheaper to just give away.
So most brands actually get a HUUUUUGE discount from influencer advertising, because it is explicitly more effective than most modern forms of advertising and you can get your product or service in front of half a million people for low 5 figures. You don't have to do anything, the influencer will take care of shooting and editing and all the hard work.
Also, nearly everything shilled through influencers is extremely cheap garbage, with significant profit margins that they just pump into more advertising, like raycons or other practically whitelabeled products
We're all the same in the end, no need to look down on people who follow things you don't care about.
This is exploited to sell those people things. It's not all that different from celebrity endorsement advertising, it's just a bit more direct and overt because the influencer might respond to a viewer's tweet or mention them by name/handle if they hit some Patreon level or buy some thing.