Indianapolis, IN —January 25, 2022— HypeAuditor, the AI analytics platform for brands seeking fair, transparent, and effective influencer marketing, today released its third annual “State of Influencer Marketing 2022” report. The report contains valuable insight into influencer marketing, focusing primarily on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, detailing the evolutions that occurred in 2021 and the predicted trends for the year ahead.
The report analyzed Instagram influencers’ accounts to see the average yearly growth of followers in order to identify the most trending Instagram categories in 2021. The data revealed that “finance and economics” grew the most in 2021 at a rate of 26.75%, followed by “health and medicine” at 23.68%. Individual “finfluencers” have also seen tremendous growth, like 25-year-old Colin Yurcisin who has grown at a rate of 122.6% in 2021, as well as entrepreneur Armando Juan Pantoja and author Robert Kiyosaki whose accounts grew 111.7% and 30.7% respectively. With the rise of online banking, cryptocurrency, and economic uncertainty, the corresponding growth of “finfluencers” across social media platforms is not surprising.
HypeAuditor’s data also found that 49% of Instagram influencers were impacted by fraud in 2021. Despite this high percentage, it has decreased by 14.3% since 2019, making this the second year in a row that HypeAuditor has discovered a decrease in fraud on Instagram. This positive trend illustrates the efforts made by Instagram to fight fraud on its platform more effectively.
Overall, the report highlights that the influencer marketing industry remains strong. HypeAuditor conservatively estimates that the global Instagram influencer market will grow from $13.8 billion in 2021 to $22.2 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.6% during the forecast period. The rise of social commerce, and the redistribution of the advertising budget from television and offline, towards digital advertising, are some of the key factors driving this growth.
In 2021, TikTok saw its growth explode amid the pandemic and reached a billion active users, according to the platform. However, HypeAuditor’s report highlights that the engagement rate (ER) for all tiers of TikTok influencers in the US has decreased.
As we saw in 2020, mega-influencers (1+ million followers) have the highest ER at 15.63%. Bella Poarch was the top growing account on TikTok, surpassing Charli D’Amelio by gaining 35 million followers at a rate of 71%, compared to D’Amelio’s 25 million new followers at a rate of 24%. New to 2021’s list was Billie Eilish, gaining 22 million followers at an immense growth rate of 152%. Mega-influencers can charge brands on average over $1000 per post according to the report.
“The influencer marketing industry continued to gain momentum and popularity in 2021, and there’s no doubt that the opportunities available will grow indefinitely this upcoming year,” said Alexander Frolov, co-founder and CEO of HypeAuditor. “But with more opportunities arising in the market, it is inevitable that the challenges in navigating influencer marketing, for both influencers and brands, will escalate with them. Our ‘State of the Influencer’ report provides influencers and brands alike with the necessary analyses and trends to consider when implementing effective influencer marketing strategies.”
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Other key findings from the report include:
On average, brands will get $4.98 of Earned Media Value for each $1 paid for Instagram Influencers promotion
The top three most mentioned brands by US influencers on Instagram are Target (53,800 mentions), Shop.ltk (214,180 mentions), and Amazon (37,580 mentions)
46% of US Instagram users are aged between 25 and 34 years, a 4% increase from 2020 indicating a migration of the platform’s younger users towards other platforms like TikTok
Brands can expect to pay from $60 for a YouTube sponsored video when partnering with a nano-influencer to over $2500 when partnering with a mega-influencer
To get a full picture of the state of influencer marketing according to HypeAuditor and access more thorough data analysis and methodology on the above, read the full State of Influencer Marketing 2022 report.
Methodology
For this research, HypeAuditor checked and combined data from 248k Instagram influencer accounts, 19.6k YouTube channels, and 14.6k TikTok accounts from the UK from its internal database.
When an account is included to HypeAuditor’s database, its main metrics are calculated based on its audience, content, subscriptions, and activities using machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Data was collected in January 2022 and reflects average metrics for 2021.
About HypeAuditor
Founded in 2018, HypeAuditor is a leader in AI-powered analytics for transparent and fraud-free influencer marketing. Its platform includes Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube analytics, as well as a suite of discovery tools and reporting features that integrate an advanced AI-based, fraud-detection system that safeguards authenticity in influencer marketing. HypeAuditor applies artificial intelligence and machine learning to determine behavioral patterns, identifying fake followers, and ascertaining engagement on influencer accounts and sponsored posts. The HypeAuditor platform has more than 500,000 users, and key customers include Dior, GroupM, Influence4You, L’Oréal, Ogilvy, TAKUMI, and Unilever. To learn more, visit HypeAuditor.com.
