Verified Confidence: medium
Primary source found; it says the same thing, the scope matches, and it is reasonably current.
Safe rephrasing
HypeAuditor's classifier flagged 42.7% of Instagram influencer accounts as affected by some fraud in 2024, down from 49.2% in 2021; it is the vendor's own detection method.
What the source says
2021 49.23% decreased by 2.5%, making this the third year in a row that this number has 2022 45.32% decreased. 2023 43.17% This is a highly positive trend that shows 2024 42.7%
HypeAuditor — State of Influencer Marketing 2025 (report PDF)
- Commonly cited as
- "Almost half of influencers have fake followers"
- True origin
- HypeAuditor — State of Influencer Marketing 2025 (report PDF)
- Type
- Stat check: A widely repeated statistic traced back to its origin.
- Year
- 2025
- Data as of
- 2021–2024 data
- Last checked
- Method & sample
- HypeAuditor's own fraud classifier (fake followers, engagement pods, purchased likes) applied to Instagram influencer accounts. 'Impacted' means any detected fraud, not mostly fake.
- Drift between quote and source
- 'Impacted by fraud' is not 'has mostly fake followers'
- Vendor's own detection method
- Interest
- HypeAuditor sells influencer analytics and discovery software. It sells fraud-detection tools.