Instagram influencers are now FAKING sponsored posts
The rise of ‘sponcon’: Wannabe Instagram stars are now FAKING sponsored posts to make them look like real ads – in the hope of getting brand deals in the future
- Brands are now getting free advertising by influencers faking sponsored posts
- Instagram users post false adverts in hopes real brands will like what they see
- CJ OperAmericano says real sponsored posts are now ‘like a verification badge’
Wannabe Instagram stars have come up with a canny trick to make themselves look attractive to brands by faking sponsored posts, in the hope of getting real deals in the future.
The rising trend has seen bloggers posting pictures of products they bought themselves but tagging the brand in such a way that it looks like they were paid for the posts, reports the Atlantic.
By posting so called ‘sponcon’ posts, Instagram stars hope that they will entice brands who might not otherwise take a risk on sponsoring an influencer they’ve not worked with before.
Lifestyle influencer Sydney Pugh, who lives in Los Angeles, is one of the Instagrammers who has admitted to faking sponsored posts.
One example is a recent post where she tagged a local coffee shop, making it look as if she’d been paid for the post.
She said: ‘Instead of [writing] “I need coffee to get through the day,” mine will say “I love Alfred’s coffee because of A, B, C”.
Sydney Pugh, pictured, faked a sponsored post by sharing a picture of a coffee she bought from a local cafe with a caption making it seem like she had been paid to make the post – a trend that is becoming increasingly common on Instagram
Palak Joshi, an influencer from Mumbai, has faked sponsored posts on her Instagram stories in the past
‘You see the same things over and over on actual sponsored posts, so it becomes really easy to emulate, even if you’re not getting paid.’
Palak Joshi, from Mumbai, has also faked posts on her stories, and wants to keep her followers in the dark about it.
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She told the Atlantic: ‘It looked sponsored, but it’s not. [My followers] just assume everything is sponsored when it really isn’t.’
The levels of false content across the photo-sharing platform has gone so far that influencers are now using real sponsored posts ‘like a verification badge’, says TikTok star CJ OperAmericano.
CJ OperAmericano, pictured, says influencers are now using real sponsored posts ‘like a verification badge’, and that rates for posts are going down because of the amount of free advertising brands are getting
Huge amounts of free advertising content from these fake posts has even affected real influencers as brands lower their rate or stop paying at all.
After losing a brand campaign when someone offered to do it for far cheaper, she told the Atlantic: ‘I don’t think people know they’re screwing each other over.’
Regular users of the app often won’t be able to tell the difference between fake and real sponsored content – and sometimes brands can’t tell either.
Although Instagrammers are now expected to clearly disclose which posts are sponsored, with many using #ad or #sponsored, many regular users still won’t notice these hashtags or even bother to check if a post is actually paid for.
Celebrities including Kim Kardashian are regularly paid to promote products such as multi vitamin gummies, and use the ‘paid partnership’ feature and use the hashtag #ad
Another trick of the trade, revealed by research earlier this year, is the ‘snap and send back’ culture.
A survey found that one in ten shoppers admit to buying clothes just to pose in for social media before returning them to the retailer, as they don’t want to be pictured in the same outfit twice.
The biggest culprits are 35-44 year-olds, with nearly one in five revealing they have bought clothes to wear just once for a social media snap, research by Barclaycard found.
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