It seems weekly we hear about another brand questioning the effectiveness of their programmatic efforts. Skepticism around programmatic has resulted in the growth of alternative advertising methods. It is little question that influencer marketing has received a large portion of optimized funds being on track in being a $10 billion industry by 2020. The growth of Influencer Marketing is inversely tied to supply chain inefficiencies, brand safety issues and cross-platform measurement discrepancies in programmatic, which will cost advertisers an estimated $19 billion in 2018. In addition, a recent study showing that 94% of marketers find influencer marketing to be an effective practice generating up to 11 times the ROI of traditional advertising brands optimization efforts into this tactic makes sense. With influencer campaigns proving effective for brands of nearly any size, advertisers are rapidly increasing their investment. All of the major social platforms are offering brand and creator tools to make sure they are involved in these campaigns, in an effort to get a bigger slice of this multi-billion dollar pie. But at the moment Instagram is the front-runner, leveraged in more than 90% of all influencer campaigns, which is almost double the usage of the second most-utilized platform. With these types of results and growth trajectory, it is no surprise creators (blog, video, graphics) are now being incorporated heavily into the overall marketing mix. Much like every successful digital media channel before it, influencer marketing has its share of growing pains. Taking a similar position to P&G’s Marc Pritchard's calling on digital to clean up its act last year, Unilever CMO Keith Weed recently expressed his dissatisfaction with the fake follower epidemic. This was a major wake-up call for the industry that reminded us influencer marketing still has some growing up to do and left us asking, how can we stop the fraud problem and ensure a mutually beneficial ecosystem for the future of the industry? Authentication is the key Social platforms are already making a big push to remedy the recent follower fraud problem. Twitter, for example, deleted roughly 6.4 million suspicious accounts each week in December 2017. Facebook also deleted an astonishing 583 million fake accounts in Q1 2018, which is more than the entire U.S. population. This, however, is just the start when it comes to helping influencer marketing mature. Tools to ensure influencers are not bots but people are critical for the future of Influencer Marketing. As our clients know, our Vryill VIP product validates influencers, so you have confidence in those influencers you have discovered and ultimately contact.