India Has Over 16 Million Fake Instagram Accounts, Report Shows

India is one of the three countries with the largest number of fake Instagram accounts. The US ranks top with 49 million. Brazil occupies the second place with 27 million, followed by India with 16 million of such accounts. The fraud is estimated to cost marketers all over the world around $ 750 million in wastage.

It is believed that most of the 16 million fake accounts are for boosting the vanity metrics to fool marketers into believing that certain influencers have enough engagement and followers for an endorsement deal.

This research is a joint effort of A Good Company, a Sweden-based startup in e-commerce, and HypeAuditor, a data analytics company. They have looked into 1.84 million Instagram accounts from 82 nations all over the world to come up with this conclusion.

This report can be found on the PRWeek:

According to Mediakix, a marketing firm, influencer marketing might be worth $2 billion this year, jumping from $1 billion two years ago.

An anonymous survey with the participation of over 400 influencers regarding the matter of whether the numbers showed were all real revealed a shocking secret. It turned out that six out of ten participants admitted using methods like engagement pods, as well as buying likes, comments, or followers. That is not all; 20 % of them said that they would continue doing that in the future.

There is another report recently revealed that most of the cast in the reality show Love Island had lots of fake followers.