Reading time: 5 minutes
How U.S. companies wasted 51.6 million U.S.-Dollars Earned Media Value on questionable advertising ambassadors
The Essentials at a Glance
Between September 2024 and August 2025, a total of 12,840 U.S. companies, such as Target, Sephora, Fashion Nova, Walmart, Shein U.S., Revolve, Amazon, Marvel Studios, Chili’s, Disney, or Ray-Ban, generated $51.6 million of EMV (Earned Media Value) via 57,767 content pieces (posts, reels or stories) through cooperations with questionable influencers on Instagram. The influencers worked with in these collaborations have audiences which consisted of more than 50% fake profiles, bots, or otherwise questionable accounts. This means that the content pieces are highly unlikely to be seen and are therefore considered ineffective, which results in money essentially being wasted.
While advertising preferences may vary, the numbers tell a clear story: Between September 2024 and August 2025, U.S. companies generated a remarkable $5 billion in Earned Media Value (EMV) through influencer collaborations on Instagram. The Earned Media Value refers to the free visibility or exposure that a brand gains from others through user-generated content, mentions, links, reviews, or engagement such as likes, shares, and comments. While influencer cooperations are generally a great way to reach your desired target audience at a reasonable cost, choosing the right creators is crucial to avoid wasting your money.
During the evaluation period, a total of 12,840 U.S. companies spent money on Instagram influencers whose audiences consisted of more than 50% fake profiles, bots, or otherwise questionable accounts. This led to 57,767 content pieces (posts, reels or stories on Instagram) and a total of $51.6 million EMV basically going to waste.
And it’s not only small, niche businesses making these mistakes of spending money on influencers with more than 50% so called mass followers - followers who are highly unlikely to see the content and are therefore considered ineffective. In fact, Fashion Nova leads the list, having published 1.222 content pieces that generated more than 1.35 million Dollars in EMV - money essentially wasted.
Disney even wasted more than $3.83 million in EMV during the same period on questionable advertising collaborations on Instagram.
The list consists of companies like Target, Sephora, Amazon Fashion, Walmart, Shein U.S., Revolve, Amazon, Marvel Studios, Chili’s, Disney, or Ray-Ban, to list only a few.
Sorted by number of content pieces:
The question is: Why would these big, renowned companies work with such flawed advertising ambassadors? In doing so, they end up wasting at least part of their budget. Well, the answer is pretty simple: It’s due to the fact that influencers on Instagram with a large amount of followers are perceived to be the best ambassadors for one’s brand. The sentiment is that if more people are reached by a content piece, the better. But this is only partially true though!
In fact, metrics like engagement (likes, comments or shares) or engagement rate (engagement divided by followers), watchtimes for videos or a real audience are far more important. Spending half the sum on an influencer with half the following but a real audience, will give you better results than spending your money blindly on those influencers with a large but ingenuine following.
So be aware of who you are giving your money to promote your product and conduct a thorough research of who you are working with, before cooperating with an ambassador on social media in one of your future campaigns.
Tools like influData, who help you find, analyze and monitor influencers, can assist you in finding those advertising ambassadors - no matter if on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook or Snapchat - that are best for your brand without burning money on influencers with fake followers or those that do not reach your target audience.
Data source: influData