Pizza Hut, Burger King and KFC among brands with most fake Instagram followers
About a quarter of the world’s most popular brands’ Instagram followers are defined as “fake” or “suspicious” accounts, according to new research.
The most popular brands in the research, Nike and Victoria’s Secret, are followed by 177.6 million and 70.5 million followers respectively. Nike’s follower list comprises 27% fake or suspicious accounts, while Victoria’s Secret is marginally higher at 28%.
Major brands with the highest proportion of fake followers were found to be Pizza Hut, Victoria’s Secret, KFC, Burger King, Subway, Wendy’s and Krispy Kreme in the report (pictured, below).
Consumer brands are the worst-affected industry included in Sortlist’s research which gave Instagram accounts a percentage score for suspicious accounts out of their total following and an audience credibility score, also as a percentage (pictured, below right).
Instagram’s own account has 26% of its followers defined as suspicious accounts, giving it a 74% audience credibility score.
Other accounts in the top eight for proportion of fake followers out of their total Instagram following included Pizza Hut, singer Nicki Minaj, tennis star Venus Williams, Queen Rania of Jordan, actor Hande Ercel, basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who all have more 27% or more, according to the Fake Followers Files research.
Instagram, part of Meta (formerly Facebook), announced in 2018 that it would remove inauthentic likes, follows and comments from accounts that use third-party apps to boost their popularity. In March Facebook said it removed 1.3 billion fake accounts in the fourth quarter of 2020 (the company reports 2.9 billion active monthly users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger).
Scott Guthrie, founder of the Influencer Trade Marketing Body, told Mediatel News: “Fake follower counts continue to be an issue for social media platforms as a whole. This is why Instagram has cracked down on firms providing fake followers on their platform.
“Often genuine accounts are followed by bots without the account owner actively paying for these fake followers.
“I regularly hear of honest brokers with follower counts including 20% and 30% of bots through no fault of their own.”
Gurthrie highlighted recent HypeAuditor internal research which indicated only 55% of Instagram followers are real people, meaning the other 45% consist of bots, inactive accounts and mass followers.
He added: “Influencer fraud is becoming less relevant within influencer marketing as we move away from lionising size of audience in favour of turning to intent metrics and impact metrics.
“Today influencer marketing is more about pulling in than reaching out: it’s about nudging a community towards action whether that is engaging people to leave a meaningful comment or enticing them to click through to a website for more information, or ultimately buying a product.”
The report also found actors, musicians, reality stars and influencers with the highest number of suspicious users or bots on their Instagram accounts with Jay Alvarezz, Mario Falcone, Hande Ercel, Nicki Minaj coming out top (pictured, right).
Influencer Jay Alvarrez, reality star Mario Falcone and premier league side Leicester City FC are the top three Instagram accounts with the highest proportion of fake followers, according to Sortlist’s research.
Alvarrez has 36% of his following defined as “suspicious accounts”, while Falcone and Leicester City FC sit at 32%.
The report also showed those Instagram accounts with the fewest fake followers, spanning world leaders like UK Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to Friends actor Jennifer Aniston (pictured, left).
