The Top Instagram Virtual Influencers in 2019

Virtual influencers are on everyone’s lips: Brands including KFC, Yoox, and luxury fashion house Balmain have now created their own virtual influencers to promote their products, psychologists warn that virtual influencers can be dangerous for children’s mental health, and creators want to connect CGI (computer-generated imagery) with AI.

Check HypeAuditor's later studies on top virtual influencers on Instagram:

Top Instagram Virtual Influencers 2020

Top Instagram Virtual Influencers 2021

Top Instagram Virtual Influencers 2022

Content

Virtual Influencers Engagement Rate
Audience of Virtual Influencers by age and gender
Audience of Virtual Influencers by countries
Average Instagram posts number of Virtual Influencers
Percent of Virtual Influencers with no posts in last 30 days
Percent of Virtual Influencers with negative followers growth
Top 30 Virtual Influencers List
Lilmiquela description
Noonoouri description
Imma.gram description
Shudu.gram description
Bermudaisbae description
Blawko22 description
Itsbinxie description
Guggimon description
Cadeharper description
Janky description
Alizarexx description
Aliona_pole description
Key TakeAways

Virtual Influencers Engagement Rate

Median Virtual Influencers ER compared to Worldwide ER by Tiers

Virtual Influencers have almost three times higher engagement rates than real influencers. That means that followers are more engaged in virtual influencers' content.

Audience of Virtual Influencers by age and gender

Audience of Real and Virtual Influencers by age and gender

The core audience of virtual influencers is women between 18 and 24 years old – 32.1%.
11,2% of CGI’s audience is Gen Z, between 13 and 17 years old. For Instagram, it is a significant share.

The audience of Virtual Influencers by countries

The audience of Virtual Influencers by countries

The majority of virtual influencers' audience is from the USA. This is not surprising because the only mega virtual influencer Lil Miquela and 2 of 5 Mid-tier influencers are from the USA.

Average Instagram posts number

Average Instagram posts number of Virtual Influencers and Regular Influencers by Tiers

A real influencer should make almost four times more Instagram posts to gain the same number of followers as the Virtual Influencer.

Percent of Virtual Influencers with no posts

Percent of Virtual Influencers who doesn’t have posts for the last 30 days

Production of new content for Virtual Influencers costs money. A real regular influencer can always take a selfie, and that won’t cost a cent for them, virtual influencers should hire 3d artists for that purpose.

Negative followers growth

Percent of Virtual Influencers who has negative followers growth for the last 3 months

30% of Virtual Influencers have negative followers growth (cadeharper, aliona_pole, perl.www, daisypaigey, pippapei, candiceklubb, ivaany.h, amanda_bims, iam.3d). It may mean that accounts loose bots or audience don’t like the content and unfollow the influencers.

Top 30 Virtual Influencers list

HypeAuditor made a list of the most popular 30 virtual influencers' accounts based on their Quality Audience number and analyzed their audience and behavior to find distinctive features and trends.

Virtual Influencers – fake online personalities created using computer-generated imagery and controlled by brands or media agencies.

Lil Miquela 

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAdtEEzH20p/

• 1. Lilmiquela
  Quality Audience: 1.1M
  Followers number: 1.7M
  ER: 1.97%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Brud.fui
  Brand mentions(180 days): 26

Virtual influencers or Computer generated Influencers (CGI) first appeared in 2016 when Los Angeles-based company Brud started an Instagram account  Lil Miquela.

Lil Miquela now is the most popular Virtual Influencer with 1.6 m followers.
As a marketing tool, Lil Miquela has featured product endorsements for streetwear and luxury brands such as Calvin Klein, Prada, Samsung Mobile.

Lil Miquela is a trans-media project. Besides the Instagram account, she has released several music singles and has a YouTube channel with over 8.4 million video views.
Golden girl Miquela was also listed among Time’s “Most Influential People on the Internet 2018”

Noonoouri

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_uXHUaDjl7/

• 2. Noonoouri 
  Quality Audience: 230K
  Followers number: 331K
  ER: 2.39%
  Country: France
  Operator: IMGmodels
  Brand mentions(180 days): 176
  

She is 19 years old, has over 330,000 Instagram followers, and works with the biggest brands in the fashion industry like Dior, Valentino, Versace.
“Noonoouri is cute, curious, and couture and is one of the fastest growing influencers on Instagram,” – says her author Joerg Zuber.

One still post takes between two-three days. Animation like for the KKW content takes us up to four-eight weeks, and this is with several people working on it.

Noonoouri is the leader of our list by the number of brand mentions: 176 mentions in 180 days.

Imma.gram

https://www.instagram.com/p/B_EeD-DjNwc/

• 3. Imma.gram 
  Quality Audience: 128K
  Followers number: 159K
  ER: 3.46%
  Country: Japan
  Operator: Aww.tokyo
  Brand mentions(180 days): 33

Imma was created by CG company ModelingCafe, who transposes her 3D animated head onto a real-life body and background. Imma takes her name from the Japanese word ima which means now. Among her brand mentions are fashion brands like Valentino, Hermes, Tiffany and Co. Imma.gram has more followers from Brazil (35%) than from Japan(15%).

Shudu.gram

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt3yZR7hfuQ/

• 4. Shudu.gram
  Quality Audience: 121K
  Followers number: 192K
  ER: 5.39%
  Country: England
  Operator: TheDiigitals
  Brand mentions(180 days): 6

Shudu.gram a black C.G.I. model created by the white fashion photographer Cameron-James Wilson. He claims he’s never actually profited from Shudu and that his only goal is to bring more diversity to the fashion and gaming spaces.
Wilson sees CGI modeling as a future avenue for real-life models to book multiple gigs at the same time—or to save real, physical work for jobs that pay more.

Nowadays Shudu is operated by the world’s first all digital modelling agency The Diigitals.

The Diigitals has 5 virtual influencer models and deals with such brands like Smart, KFC and Dubai Mall.

Bermudaisbae

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6yzwK_hXDh/

• 5. Bermudaisbae
  Quality Audience: 107K
  Followers number: 180K
  ER: 4.92%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Brud.Fui
  Brand mentions(180 days): 13

Bermuda is a character created by Brud.In April 2018, a trans-media story began to play out on Miquela’s (1) Instagram. In this narrative, a white-supremacist character known as Bermuda (@BermudaIsBae) hacked in to Miquela’s account, deleting all photos of Miquela and replacing them with photos of herself. Lil Miquela and Bermuda were then revealed to be sentient robots created by competing AI companies.

Blawko22

https://www.instagram.com/p/B19KRI7lVuN/

• 6. Blawko22 
  Quality Audience: 82.4K
  Followers number: 145K
  ER: 3.74%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Brud.Fui
  Brand mentions(180 days): 14

Miquela and Bermuda are joined by another Brud-born character, Blawko. Just like Miquela and Bermuda, he offers an eerily authentic personality. He plays video games, goes on dates, and doesn’t clean his room. For last 180 days Blawko22 has 14 brand mentions  with such brands like Netflix, Nike, DelTaco.

Itsbinxie

https://www.instagram.com/p/B9hWKJlFwka/

• 7. Itsbinxie
  Quality Audience: 79.5K
  Followers number: 103K
  ER: 5.44%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Neon Evolution
  Brand mentions(180 days): 8

Binxie(7) & Aliza Rex (11) who are aliens from Planet E88 have been on Earth for 4 months. The Company that created them is the brainchild of Brian Lee an American serial entrepreneur who co-founded Legalzoom.com, ShoeDazzle.com, and The Honest Company.

Purpose of virtual influencers creation is entertainment. To gain followers company used a mix of organic and some lightly sponsored posts/ads, cross promoting with influencers and brands (non-sponsored).
Company has not sold any advertisement yet but they have plans to produce more avatars.
Neon Evolution considers that the future of CGIs is connecting them to AI.

Guggimon

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2kdDIalN5Y/

• 8. Guggimon
  Quality Audience: 61.7K
  Followers number: 91.9K
  ER: 5.21%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Superplastic
  Brand mentions(180 days): 15

Superplastic, the designer toy brand launched by Kidrobot founder Paul Budnitz, has raised a $10 million Series A round of funding to turn two of its characters into animated digital media stars: Guggimon (7) and Janky (9)

“Our characters live their lives on social media,” Budnitz told during a recent interview. “It’s like making a movie that never ends.”

Cadeharper

• 9. Cadeharper
  Quality Audience: 48.2K
  Followers number: 93.3K
  ER: 7.46%
  Country: United States
  Operator: SparkCGI
  Brand mentions(180 days): 15

Cade Harper is a typical teenager. His message of positivity is designed to encourage self-esteem and respect within the Gen-Z community and he is the first Virtual Influencer in our list who has negative followers gain.
For the last three months Cadeharpers account lost 4547 followers.
His creator Charlie Buffin considers that Instagram is the next TV and new Spunch Bob will come from the new media platform.

Janky

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-XyeqcBxhK/

• 10. Janky
  Quality Audience: 61.7K
  Followers number: 91.9K
  ER: 5.21%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Superplastic
  Brand mentions(180 days): 15
  

Behind Janky and Guggimon stands the team of 10 animators. The team is being headed by Jared Johnson, who previously worked as a character animator on “Jurassic Park.

Superplastic wants to continue to make money with toy sales, but Butnitz said that the expansion into digital media was also opening up additional revenue opportunities. This includes licensing its characters, and also brand endorsement deals similar to those of Instagram influencers. Janky has 14 brand mentions including Gillette, Downtoshop, Warner Brothers

Alizarexx

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8uhFCHJ9nE/

• 11. Alizarexx
  Quality Audience: 20.1K
  Followers number: 29.5K
  ER: 3.74%
  Country: United States
  Operator: Neon Evolution

Aliona_pole

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-oaB0iJ1ed/

• 12. Aliona_pole
  Quality Audience: 16.9K
  Followers number: 22.8K
  ER: 3.9%
  Country: Russia
  Operator: Malivar

Brand mentions(180 days): 2
Post price: 
Aliona Pole is made by the Russian company Malivar that creates and promotes virtual influencers. Besides Aliona the company has 2 other CGI characters Dima Rovno and Eva Glada but they both have less than 1000 followers and can’t be considered to be influencers.
Aliona’s account has negative followers gain.
For the last three months, she lost 3955 followers.

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Key Takeaways

Virtual Influencers are popular among the younger generation (Gen Z). 11,2% of CGI’s audience are Gen Z between 13 and 17 years old.

The production of a high-quality 3d model is expensive. To reduce costs some operators don’t model the whole body, but only do the head and then add the head to the photos of a real person (Imma.gram f.e.).

Over time, the costs of the 3d model creation will be lower and then there will be more virtual influencers, but there will not be that hype surrounding them.

The popularity of virtual influencers is due to the fact that they were the first and were supported by the media. Subsequent will not cause such a stir and will have to be promoted by investing money.

From the list of 30 Virtual Influencers 27% didn’t post anything for the last 30 days and 30% have negative followers growth.

The most popular Virtual influencers are transmedia: they have accounts on YouTube and Twitter, make collaborations with real people and participate in real events.

Virtual Influencers cost more than real influencers with the same number of followers.
Post from daisypaigey (17) will cost 5000 $,
Post from cadeharper (8) will cost 2000$,
Post from Lil Wavy (13) will cost 500$+.

Now the advertisers receive not only the promo post but also the hype that this type of advertisement can make in media. Virtual Influencers are still surprising and newsworthy, but that won’t last forever.

To make a wow effect next Virtual Influencers should be connected with AI.