Earlier this year, Bazaarvoice commissioned research into the attitudes of consumers across the UK, Germany, and France about their attitude towards influencers.
They found that:
- 47% of consumers are “fatigued” by repetitive sponsored posts by influencers
- 49% of consumers would like to see stricter enforcement of rules for sponsored content
- 62% felt that influencer content takes advantage of an impressionable audience
- 54% said that influencers misrepresented real life
On the flipside, within the industry sponsored influencer posts are set to grow, with the World Federation of Advertisers finding that 65% of to the 34 biggest advertisers were going to increase their spend on Influencer Marketing. Along with this, many are predicting that Influencer Marketing could ease the death of display ads in a world full of adblock.
Over the past couple of years, as Influencer Marketing has become more predominant, so have brands working with influencers on sponsored content. At this point, there are real questions being asked about how consumers feel about sponsored content and whether the industry has hit the point where it is too saturated by ads.
In the first of our Sponsored Content series this week, we will begin by looking at the proportion of influencers who have posted any sponsored content by content category.
Wearisma Insight
Over January to September of this year, we have found that 43% of all influencers within the UK have done at least one sponsored post. Within the different influencer categories, 63% of all beauty influencers have done at least one sponsored post over 2018, followed by 55% of fashion influencers and 54% of food and drink influencers.
With such nearly half of all UK influencers and over 60% of Beauty influencers already posting sponsored content, this could infer that sponsored content is already a key ingredient of an industry which is rapidly growing.
So why do a lot of consumers still feel fatigued by sponsored posts? In next week’s post, we will be taking a deeper dive and looking at what proportion of influencers content is an ad. Stay tuned to find out!