Questions raised over true value of top vloggers’ audiences

Whether you love them or hate them, it looks like video bloggers are here to stay; however, doubts have been raised over the true value of this new wave of social talent.

As well as entertaining the digital masses in their millions – from Q&As and gaming advice, to make-up tutorials and style tips – vloggers have quickly become brand ambassadors with enormous audiences.

In fact, some are so influential that when Zoe Sugg, or ‘Zoella’, as she’s better known, partnered with Topshop to offer viewers the chance to win a £500 gift voucher if they clicked on the ad below her video on YouTube, click-through rate soared from a lowly 0.1% average to 40%.

However, as fake accounts and ‘bots’ increasingly invade the web, and thousands of followers can be bought for as little as £99, Newsline can reveal that a significant proportion of some of the world’s top vlogger Twitter followers are considered to be ‘fake’ or ‘inactive’, raising questions for advertisers wanting to jump on the bandwagon.

Using an analysis tool, which splits Twitter users into three categories – ‘fake’, ‘inactive’ and ‘good’ – 58% of Zoella’s 3.18 million followers (at the time of writing) are considered to be ‘good’, while 5% (159,000) flagged up as ‘fake’ and 37% (1.18 million) as ‘inactive’.

The follower data is derived from a sample of 1,000 which is assessed against a number of simple spam criteria, giving a basic level breakdown of a Twitter account’s follower make-up.

While ‘fake’ doesn’t necessarily indicate a spambot account, these accounts tend to have few or no followers, and few or no tweets, and in contrast usually follow a lot of other accounts.

‘Inactive’ accounts are those used on a ‘read-only’ basis, meaning that a person behind the account may be real but they do not post or take part in any other activity. Therefore it is flagged as ‘inactive’.

Pewdiepie, famed for his entertaining gaming vlogs, has almost as many ‘inactive’ followers as ‘good’ (46% and 49%, respectively), while only six in 10 of South African teen heartthrob Caspar Lee’s followers are thought to be alive-and-tweeting.

Finn Harries, one half of JacksGap, came out on top with 64% ‘good’ followers, with identical twin Jack following with a score of 61%. However, 8% of Jack Harries’ followers are thought to be fake, compared with the sample’s mode average of 5%.

However, it’s video game enthusiast-cum-prankster Callux, who once got himself into a bit of trouble after his ‘stealing a car prank‘ backfired, who has the largest amount of fake followers of the vloggers sampled, at 15% (a little over 23,000 out of 155,000). He also scored lowest number of ‘good’ followers (47%).

In terms of accuracy, the tool provides the most accurate insight for accounts with 50,000 followers or less. For those with hundreds of thousands, or millions of followers, it still provides good insight but tends to better reflect the current follower activity rather than the whole follower base.

With the value of the numbers in question, the news will prompt brands to question how they can protect themselves and make sure they’re investing in genuine, engaged audiences rather than more hype.

Commenting on the findings, Alex Packham, founder of social media and digital marketing agency, ASTP, said that brands need to make sure they do their research when using vloggers as part of their marketing strategy to avoid wasting budget.

“Influencer and blogger outreach has become a crucial element to any serious social media and SEO strategy over the past three years or so, and brands are investing more time and budget into building this kind of activity than ever before,” said Packham.

“One of the key things to watch out for is false, fake and unaudited data when embarking on this kind of marketing. Anyone can buy 10,000 followers for £99 and become an ‘influencer’ overnight.

“When thinking about launching a blogger of influencer outreach campaign, do your research; use Twitter Audit to calculate the percentage of fake followers on a users account, ask for case studies and screenshots of analytics platforms to ensure credibility, arrange a phone call to talk through how the person likes to work.

“Simple research like this means budget isn’t wasted delivering reach and clicks to a lifeless bot at the end of the line instead of a valuable prospect consumer.”

All total audience figures correct as of April 2015.