P&G and Disneyland among brands reaching most fake followers on Instagram

Advertisers have almost doubled the amount they’re spending on Instagram influencer campaigns in the US and Canada since 2018. However in the past three months alone, $65m has been wasted reaching fake followers – with household names like P&G and Disneyland among the top spenders duped.

According to figures from influencer measurement company Instascreener, North American advertisers allocated a $478m slice of their budgets to influencers in Q3.

Instagram took the lion’s share of this, pooling in $340m worth of spend (an increase of 95% on the same period last year). Although, of this $65m was funnelled into reaching fake eyeballs.

P&G’s Febreze was crowned the “most fooled” brand when it came to investing in campaigns that reached bots instead of people. Analysis on its sponsored Instagram posts indicated that of the accounts that had engaged with the post 54% were fake.

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