"This week, influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor has released a study of content from more than 154k Instagram influencers, each of whom sees at least 30% of their following coming from users in the regions in which Instagram's hidden Like counts test is currently running."

"Despite the ups and downs of the CGI-influencer presence on social media, social media analytics firm HypeAuditor’s recent release of the “Top Instagram Virtual Influencers in 2019” reveals recent trends in the demographic."

"A new study by HypeAuditor reported by Social Media Today found that influencers across tiers of follower counts almost unanimously saw their Like counts fall in countries where the hidden Like count test was active. Likes fell 3% to 15% in all the countries for influencers with 5,000 to 20,000 followers."

"Billions are paid to social-media personalities to pitch products in an influencer economy riddled with deceit."

"Hypeauditor’s research shows the limits made to individual IP addresses have caused a decline in the use of the popular follow-unfollow method by as much as 84% within the first month of the update."

"Social media-monitoring site Hype Auditor places her top because she gets an average of 3.6 million likes per post. Boffins at the site use programmes to weed out fake followers and the data is used by firms wanting to get the best value for money from stars plugging products and services."

"A study by HypeAuditor – one of the industry's preferred fraud-detection tools – found the majority of UK Instagram influencer accounts engage in some form of fakery, while another study estimates that 15 per cent of influencer adspend ($1.3bn) reaches fake followers."

"That's why HelloSociety and most other influencer marketing businesses rely on online tools to sniff out counterfeit or fraudulent accounts—and influencers who profit from them. All of these tools (and there are many, with names like Social Audit Pro, IG Audit, Hypr, HypeAuditor, and Famoid) work a little differently, but they're all looking for deviations from the platform's norm. An account with no profile picture, say, or one that follows 10,000 people and never posts. Also suspicious: lots of digits in the username, or a person who seems to live in Turkey or Indonesia, but follows only California-based influencers."

"An early study by analytics company HypeAuditor found that influencers with followings of between 5,000 and 20,000 lost up to 15 per cent of their likes when they were hidden – out of sight, out of mind for both viewers and content creators. But many have now come around to the benefits it gives them. And they believe that it will change the kind of content that you see on Instagram."