Are too many paid posts ruining influencer marketing? Saturation rate has become the unaddressed elephant in the room. So why is nobody talking about it?
SR is a thing.
Saturation rate, or SR, is defined as the ratio between an influencer’s total content and the number of sponsored posts they’ve done. So if an influencer has a saturation rate of over 50%, it means they post more sponsored than unsponsored content. On Instagram, saturation rate can range from 0% to almost 100%.
What are the implications of posting lots of sponsored content?
It’s a thin line to walk for influencers.
Engagement rate is a key metric for influencers, especially since brands are looking for high performers. Yet, the saturation rate can have a direct impact on it. In fact, at Upfluence, we looked at data collected from hundreds of thousands of Instagram influencers, and we found that, on a grand scale, the relationship is inversely proportional. Basically, as the saturation rate increases, there is a decrease in engagement from followers.
Not so surprised? It’s normal. Intuitively, everyone understands this phenomenon: Too many ads have always been a turn-off. Or in pre-social media days, at least merited a swift mute.
Why it matters for advertisers.
Just like how certain special commercials could charm TV viewers, there are exceptions to this rule, too. We can now differentiate between two kinds of influencers: those who produce sponsored posts as a “necessary evil” (often, setting the engagement rate bar quite low) and those who knock their sponsored content out of the park.
In a lot of ways, brands have been going about it all wrong by looking at overall engagement rates rather than focusing on influencers who can create high-performing sponsored content.
If SR has such a profound impact on engagement, why is no one talking about it?
If we all know that oversaturation costs engagement, wouldn’t it be nice if platforms included SR as a metric? Why don’t they? Well, put simply, it’s hard to do!
To provide accurate SR data, a platform must be able to identify a sponsored post. This requires both textual analyses (captions, hashtags, mentions, etc.) but also image recognition to look for things like product placements or logos in photos. (I wrote about the practical applications of machine learning for influencer platforms in a previous post.)
Since this requires so much extra technical legwork, many influencer marketing platforms won’t include SR metrics in their analytics despite the fact that it would help advertisers make more informed selections. Which brings us to another point: Some influencer platforms don’t necessarily have sufficient volumes to allow advertisers to be so selective.
What’s next?
As we’ve seen, audiences can get burned out with excessive paid posts. Fixing the oversaturation issue will bring back a level of authenticity to social media, diminishing the number of uninspired ads while increasing the value of a good collaboration.
This is a win for content creators. Influencers who can create sponsored posts that perform just as well or better than their organic ones will only augment in value. I expect brands will have to face the music and give them not only full creative direction but more resources and greater compensation.
For marketers, it’s time to slow down and focus on quality. It will change everything.
The truth is, there’s an incredibly diverse range in engagement rates when it comes to influencer marketing (from off the charts to dismal). In an industry with so many different outcomes, performance can feel impossible to predict.
Nonetheless, the future of influencer marketing is predictive performance algorithms.
It needs to be; otherwise, how will it ever become a stable, scalable marketing channel? Understanding the balance (and finding the sweet spot) between engagement rate and saturation rate will play a role in the development of these algorithms. Luckily, there are millions and millions of posts out there that we can analyze. Little by little, trends are emerging. With machine learning, influencer platforms will know who to sponsor and when in order to minimize audience fatigue and maximize their engagement.
