You might be interested in reading the 1928 book "Propaganda" by Edward Bernays, the so-called "father of public relations". It describes at length how, among many other techniques, paid influencers are effective for making people value your product more (e.g. invite the top fashion blogger to wear your hat at an event, then the secondary influencers will take note, and then the proles will note after the secondary influencers, etc.). Quite creepy but eye-opening book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_(book)

What he probably did not predict is just how many of today's influencers are famous for very little besides getting paid for influencing.

I guess we all are a bit guilty of giving our attention in part because we'd like to be like those who receive it, and getting money for what others have to pay for, . It's most visible in networks with a follow/follow-back economy like Instagram, but bloggers, conference speakers, anywhere a personal brand has wider reach than friends and family.

Not saying ad spend on branding is a very optimised area in general - but the prices of billboards / tv ads etc are sky high and have a much lower degree of targeting. There is an assumption that their prospective and current customers will take note of the fact that the celeb is using their particular product and this will influence a purchase or reduce churn to a rival brand. It may be an effective channel for them.

Bonkers when you take a step back. But logical given the context.

Marketing departments have a budget and they have to spend it. The connection between A (spending the money) and B (people buying the product) doesn't have to be that well supported. A lot of advertising is just "brand awareness". A company wants their brand the last one you saw when you walk into a grocery store.

I suspect this is comparably easy to measure since it's often a single event? I know some YouTube sponsors do so because they see the traffic/sale spike, which lets them estimate the effect.

You may recall some books spiking up the best seller lists because Oprah recommended them.

In the case discussed here (celebrities pumping ICOs) it would be easy to manage because they likely have affiliate links or specific urls. Even without those, the ICO could watch incoming traffic over a certain time and see the spike of IG visitors after a post.

In my original comment, I was more referring to advertisement like Tide putting up a billboard. How do they know it works? Well, I'm sure they do market surveys "Have you seen this billboard?" but it's probably full of bias. But in the grand scheme of things, it's just for market awareness as I said. Keep Tide on the minds of consumers.

Spending that money can also give the marketing employees a chance to socialize with celebrities and attend some cool parties.

A single one-off photo or video of an influencer with a product would rarely if ever produce enough revenue to justify a 6 figure spend, even with the largest influencers (Selena Gomez, Ariana Grande, etc.). Those deals with high per-post prices are usually for several posts/videos/stories. For example, a $1 million deal for 10 posts spread out over a few weeks or months with someone that has a massive following may have a reasonable chance of generating positive ROI, while a one-off deal for $100K is almost certain to lose money. It isn't just the exposure that makes it effective, it's aligning the product with the influencer. Doing this dramatically improves the conversion rate among their followers. I'd much rather have a 10% conversion rate on an influencer with 10K followers than I would want to have a 0.5% conversion rate on someone with 100K followers. I'll spend far less on the 10K media buy, and make twice the revenue.

Dan Bilzerian, for example, generated over $500K in marijuana prodct sales on black Friday, largely because of his social media posts. But he has aligned his entire Instagram account and his perceived lifestyle around the brand (he owns the company). That figure represents the culmination of months of posts surrounding his brand of marijuana products. The same with Kylie Cosmetics - it has become something that Kylie Jenner is synonymous with.

Are you familiar with Fashion Nova?

Their only form of marketing is paying a network of 3,000 influencers to post on social media about their clothes.

(FYI:Some of the dresses could be considered NSFW) https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/inside-fashion...

There was nothing NSFW in there, I was very disappointed.

I can confirm

Cheaper than running a superbowl ad. And much more targeted/effective.