Earlier, the only way brands could advertise their products or services was through television commercials. Today, however, times have changed, and social media platforms have become the dominant force in advertising. YouTube, Instagram or Facebook social media influencers are leading this change. These influencers have become the link between the brands and the consumers because of their vast following and the community they have built throughout the years of creating content that resonates with their audience.
India has a diverse range of influencers, from micro-influencers with niche communities to macro-influencers and celebrities with millions of followers. Earlier, brand collaboration was based on a simplistic approach of high following and basic algorithm, but over the years, brands have realised that productive collaboration with high ROI involves much more than just having millions of followers.
This is where we can understand the contribution of AI in influencer marketing because AI has automated the process of choosing the perfect influencer for brand campaigns that resonate with the brand value alongside having a high engagement and trusted community. AI-powered marketing involves in-depth analysis, including audience engagement, conversions, engagement rate, follower growth, and audience reach. This enables brands to choose the right influencer for their campaign who align with their brand values.
AI also helps brands by analysing audience sentiments, enabling them to tailor personalized content that resonates with their audience and maintains the authentic content they crave. AI-powered marketing goes far beyond finding the perfect influencer for a brand campaign, it also generates an array of content ideas and trendy captions that align with the campaign. AI has taken over monotonous tasks like audience engagement, reach, content scheduling and content approval, by automating the entire management process and reducing the brands’ tasks.
AI-powered marketing also helps by predicting the kinds of content that would be appreciated by the audience in the future, which is done by analysing past data and audience engagement, benefitting the brand by staying ahead of trends. For instance, if a brand is launching a new makeup product, AI can analyse and check for beauty trends that resonate with the product. It can then identify influencers like beauty gurus who review new makeup launches, this helps the brand find the right influencer for their campaign and cater to the right audience, making it a profitable collaboration.
In this technological era, influencer fraud is becoming more and more prevalent. Buying followers, which usually are third-party accounts, or bots, to increase the follower count is to create an illusion of popularity which is one of the most common influencer frauds. To combat this challenge, AI analysis helps identify organic engagement rate, follower growth and audience reach. This helps the brand collaborate with influencers with a genuine following, which gives them high ROI whilst protecting the brand from ineffective collaborations.
The introduction of virtual influencers is one of the most significant influences of AI in influencer marketing. Virtual influencers are AI-generated influencers who are developed with the abilities of a human influencer. Brands can personalise virtual influencers’ content according to their campaign needs, making them highly reliable and profitable for brands. Working with virtual influencers over human influencers helps the brand avoid the risks of personal controversies, which can tarnish the brand image and the inconsistent behaviour of human influencers, which can impact the efficiency of the collaboration. Even though virtual influencers are a new concept in India, we still have emerging virtual influencers like Kyra and Kavya Mehra, who have already created their niche community and collaborated with brands that resonate with this agenda.
Despite various advantages of AI in influencer marketing, they still raise ethical and legal concerns. User data is heavily accessed by AI marketing tools, which raises concerns about user data privacy. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ensures that brands align with the regulations of the Act. This act explicitly provides guidelines such as, brands that are collaborating need to get user consent either directly or indirectly, if third-party platforms are used for tracking algorithm, audience reach and engagement metrics then the brand needs to ensure that influencer personal data is completely protected, brands should collect data which is used for marketing purposes only. While working with virtual influencers, brands must be extra cautious in ensuring transparency with users and getting user consent since this interaction could involve the exchange of heavy personal data, which could again raise privacy concerns. Mainly, data security measures like regulating control access, need to be implemented by brands to ensure user data is protected.
Because of the community influencers have built among their followers, they can easily influence the audience into buying marketed products. However, it is of paramount importance that influencers maintain transparency while endorsing sponsored products with their respective audience, this aspect of influencer marketing is safeguarded and scrutinised by The Advertising Standard Council of India. Under this, disclosure of any partnership or collaboration between the brands and the influencers is mandatory.
Protection against misleading advertisements by influencers are regulated under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019. The brand and the influencer can be held liable for posting misleading advertisements.
Undoubtedly, the future of influencer marketing in India is linked with AI. However, over-usage of AI-powered marketing tools could hinder the genuine connection between influencers and audiences. From matchmaking of influencers and brands to automating content management, everything is AI-powered in this new era of influencer marketing. This rapidly growing AI generation makes it vital for brands to establish a balance between keeping up with innovations and fulfilling their responsibilities. Even though general legal principles are applicable, this pace of technological growth requires a well-defined legal framework to regulate AI in influencer marketing.
Authors: Riya Gupta & Ashmita Shetty