Will the Influencer Marketing Bubble Burst?

In its current form, the word influencer was added to the dictionary in 2019, but it’s a term we’ve been used to for a long time. We delve into the history of influencing here, but something we often get asked is, will the influencer marketing bubble burst?

The answer is no, not any time soon. Even in the past 10 years, we’ve seen the business of ‘influencing’ evolving and growing, now unrecognisable from glitzy celebrity endorsement we’ve seen previously, and rather a celebration of people with a small following and a vast knowledge in a certain subject. Will it stay like this forever? No. In the next few years we will see another iteration of what it means to have influence, certainly as Generation Alpha, a group who have had social media integrated into their lives from their literal conception, begin to hold spending power. It’s them - who many will have had their lives documented from a young age and might even hold the title of an influencer already - will move the needle on how we consume influence.

Whether this comes in the form of smaller, more consenting communities of consumers, or the emergence of new technologies that further integrate our daily lives and virtual worlds; audiences will always be important to brands, and users (not always person, see Lil Miquela) will hold the key to those audiences.