How does Mediarails identify Instagram Audience Types?

Mediarails connects to a variety of services in order to pull in data on Influencers. These services are first-party (built by Mediarails), third party services, or a combination of both. 

The Audience Type data can be found in the Mediarails Discover tools, including the Influencer Lookup and the Discover tool.

How are Real People identified?

By identifying behavioral patterns of an Instagram user that is similar to the behavioral actions of a live person, such as the actions they are taking and normal ratios of followers to followings.

 

How are Suspicious Accounts identified?

An influencer's follower base is analyzed for multiple red flags. Followers are detected to be suspicious if they have one or more of the following red flags:

• Odd usernames such as nonsense text or long strings of numbers and/or letters
• High ratio of followers to following
  • Accounts who follow large numbers of profiles with low to no followers themselves
• Accounts with no followers
• Accounts with no posts (that are not brand new accounts)
• 0 posts in the last 30 days
• No profile picture

Influencers themselves may be analyzed for red flags as well including:

• Suspiciously low engagement rate for number of followers
• Unusual geographic followings
• Sudden and significant spike in followers
• Large number of Mass followers (more details below)

 

What are Mass Followers?

Mass followers are suspicious accounts with over 1500 followers. These accounts often follow a mass of irrelevant accounts in hopes that others will follow them back. Mass followers often utilize automatic following and unfollowing services. Their follows are thusly inauthentic and provide no real value to the influencer they are following.

They are identified using similar red flags as listed above for other suspicious accounts including unlikely follower ratios, few or no posts, and follows in unusual geographic locations or languages.

Who is considered an Influencer?

Instagram users who have more than 5,000 followers and less than 1500 followings are considered to be influencers.