HypeAuditor, the AI analytics platform for brands who want fair and transparent influencer marketing, has released its third annual “State of Influencer Marketing” 2022 report, unveiling the key Influencer Marketing trends in 2021 across TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
Overall, the report reveals that the influencer marketing industry is going strong and HypeAuditor conservatively estimates that the global Instagram influencer market will grow from $US13.8 billion in 2021 to $22.2 billion by 2025. The rise of social commerce, and the redistribution of the advertising budget from television and offline towards digital advertising, are some of the key drivers of this growth.
When it comes to fraud, HypeAuditor’s data reveals that almost half of Australian Instagram influencers (49 per cent) continued to be impacted by fraud in 2021. Despite this high number, there has been a decrease of 6.16 per cent since last year, indicating a slight and rather slow progress by Instagram in its fight against the use of fraudulent methods on its platform. Micro (1k-5k followers) and Nano (5k-20k followers) influencers experienced the most decrease in fraudulent activities with 4.41 per cent and 6.76 per cent decrease respectively.
After a year of releasing multiple new features and functionalities to inspire creativity and help users better engage with content, TikTok took the first place as the top growing social media platform in 2021 reaching 1 billion active users – an 18.3 per cent increase in 2021. Two-thirds (64.8 per cent) of TikTok users are under the age of 24, of which 39 per cnet are between 18-24 years of age.
However, despite the significant growth in active users, the engagement rate (ER) across all influencer tiers on TikTok has dropped compared to 2020. Mega-influencers (over 1m followers) have the highest ER of 13.9%. Some of the fastest growing influencer accounts on TikTok include comedian @Adammilardovicc who saw a 4064% growth, fashion model @unicewani grew her TikTok account by 1018 per cent reaching 4.8m followers and Melbourne-based @rusalien with 4.7m followers following 755 per cent growth.
When it comes to marketing specialists preferred social media channels, Instagram came out on top with 68% saying they use the platform for their marketing campaigns. Instagram creators open up huge opportunities for brands looking to market their products and services in an authentic way as customers get to know about a brand from someone they trust and have been following already.
On the other hand, due to its highly engaging visual medium that boasts a massive viewer count of 2 billion logged-in monthly users, 56 per cent of marketers name YouTube videos as the most important type of content for Influencer Marketing. Short form video content continues to offer a huge advantage to digital marketers. The ultra-snappy nature of Shorts allows marketers to funnel bitesize chunks of information to followers, without demanding they watch a long video. The other big advantage of Youtube is its reach – 26,400 influencers on YouTube have more than 1 million subscribers, which represents a big opportunity for brands to reach new demographics and audiences.
Alexander Frolov, CEO and Co-Founder at HypeAuditor commented, “The influencer marketing industry continued to gain momentum and popularity in 2021, in part due to the increased reliance of consumers on social media as e-commerce platforms. Consumers and brands alike are increasingly realising that TikTok is a force to be reckoned with. Australia has witnessed more and more politicians, even Prime Minister Scott Morrison, join TikTok in the past 12 months to connect with the younger generation ahead of the upcoming federal election.
We can expect social commerce to become more mainstream in 2022 as more social media platforms continue to provide new and innovative selling solutions to make shopping within the platform as easy as possible. ”
Other key findings from the report include:
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On average, brands will get $4.98 of Earned Media Value for each $1 paid for Instagram Influencers promotion
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Finance was the top trending topic on Instagram in 2021 as Australians seek to learn more about how to manage their money
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The top three most mentioned brands by Australian influencers on Instagram are Kmart Aus (5.4k mentions), Woolworths (4.6k mentions) and Coles Supermarkets (3.5k mentions)
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The most talked about brands on TikTok include Fashion Nova (10,960 mentions), Netflix (7,280 mentions) and McDonalds (4,940 mentions)
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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
For more details about the “State of Influencer Marketing 2022” report, click here.
