MAM
GUEST ARTICLE: The perils of influencer marketing for brands
Mumbai: The pervasive impact of social media has not only transformed our personal experiences but also woven itself intricately into the societal fabric. This transformation has given rise to a modern marketing phenomenon: influencer marketing. Supplanting conventional marketing approaches, influencer marketing has emerged as a preferred avenue for both brands and consumers, elevating influencers to the status of contemporary social media titans.
Although influencer marketing has provided brands with countless advantages, it has also exposed them to numerous challenges.
Here are some perils of influencer marketing proving to be an eminent threat to brands:
Absence of an influencer directory: A great deal of influencer marketing campaigns fail mostly due to an erroneous choice of influencers. Despite the fact that there are several influencers available in the market, the lack of a universal marketplace or influencer directory that includes influencers across all platforms limits marketers’ capacity to select from a diverse range of creators suitable to their audience. Therefore, regardless of whether they are a good fit for their brand’s offerings or not, marketers often settle for influencers who are easy to access, undermining their reputation in the marketplace and limiting their reach.
Content fatigue: Have you ever encountered a situation as a brand when your content creators are generating more content than ever through marketing channels, yet the results of all that digital confetti are dwindling? When the audience is exposed to an excessive amount of content on the channels they typically access, they hit their saturation point and experience content fatigue. This might swiftly escalate to a major worry for businesses since it can lead to missed key performance indicators (KPIs) and a reduction in metrics, affecting the bottom line. Additionally, content weariness can make it difficult for marketers to capture viewers’ attention and keep them engaged.
Influx of intermediaries: Many brands still have to rely on multiple mediums of communication and chase creators, agencies, talent managers and PR partners for timely campaign executions. Unfortunately, the more the merrier concept does not hold relevance in this regard. The efficiency of the overall process gets compromised due a more complicated communication chain caused by the involvement of more intermediaries.
Rise in influencer fraud: The evident rise in influencer marketing has also led to a corresponding rise in fake influencers. According to a Statista study, over 49% of influencers engage in follower fraud. Utilizing bots and fake followers with a motive to create an illusion of popularity, influencers today are largely duping firms into collaborating with them. Due to the exaggerated engagement and bot audience, it has become challenging for marketers to find their social match as it becomes difficult to manually identify the right influencer, impeding their ability to build a devoted consumer base.
Lack of price standardization: As influencer marketing has grown over time, social media stars have become highly sought-after marketing partners for modern brands. As a result, influencer marketing companies and other third-party middlemen are utilizing this to play marketers into paying more by promising them higher interaction and reach. Because there is a lack of price standardization and transparency, brands end up falling for exorbitant markups.
Lack of insights: Depriving brands of real-time data like brand mentions, traffic, and conversions to an influencer’s particular content, vanity metrics fail to provide a real picture. Consequently, marketers are unable to assess campaign outcomes and influencer performance, undertake predictive analysis to gauge campaign success, predict the demand for upcoming content, and embrace data-driven decision-making based on meaningful insights, targeting improved results.
Lack of platform play: While influencer marketing has transformed how brands connect with their audiences, it’s concerning that many promising voices remain unheard due to limited access to platforms and accurate representation. This limitation greatly hampers the visibility and potential collaborations for budding influencers, preventing them from fully realizing their impact. As larger and more established creators often dominate the spotlight, the unique perspectives and creativity that smaller creators bring often go unnoticed.
Influencer marketing: A marketing marvel or a failure?
90% of influencers think influencer marketing is a powerful tool for marketing, according to an Influencer Marketing Hub’s report. In today’s technologically advanced industry, the efficiency of influencer marketing cannot be disputed. However certain threats have tainted the influencer marketing field, creating a plethora of difficulties for brands.
Technology-centric tools may be just what brands need to get away with these underlying dangers and uncover new heights. Going beyond the traditional time-consuming processes, influencer management systems perform numerous integrations to identify an ideal match. Utilizing a huge database of influencers, these systems construct creator profiles based on a variety of factors, including location, genre, and content relevance, ensuring appropriate performance play. The development of creator persona goes hand in hand with the generation of the brand persona, and the two are then compared to determine the best fit. By offering data-driven solutions, influencer management tools allow businesses to target a large audience base and acquire a favorable response from the audience.
These tools not only enable marketers to discover the ideal influencer, but also combat content fatigue, avoid middlemen, guard against falling for false influencers, garner in-depth insights, and practice transparency, all of which would help them gain the most out of their influencer marketing efforts.
This article is written by Kofluence CEO & co-founder Ritesh Ujjwal.
Digital
Content India 2026 opens with a copro pitch, a spice evangelist and a £10,000 prize for Indian storytelling
Dish TV and C21Media’s three-day summit puts seven ambitious projects before an international jury, and two walk away with serious development money
MUMBAI: India’s content industry gathered in Mumbai this March for Content India 2026, a three-day summit organised by Dish TV in partnership with C21Media, and it wasted no time making a statement. The event opened with a Copro Pitch that put seven scripted and unscripted television concepts before an international panel of judges, and by the end of it, two projects had walked away with £10,000 each in marketing prize money from C21Media to support development and international promotion.
The jury, comprising Frank Spotnitz, Fiona Campbell, Rashmi Bajpai, Bal Samra and Rachel Glaister, evaluated a shortlist that ranged from a dark Mumbai comedy-drama about mental health (Dirty Minds, created by Sundar Aaron) to a Delhi coming-of-age mystery (Djinn Patrol, by Neha Sharma and Kilian Irwin), a techno-thriller about a teenage gaming prodigy (Kanpur X Satori, by Suchita Bhatia), an investigative crime drama blending mythology and modern thriller (The Age of Kali, by Shivani Bhatija), a documentary on India’s spice heritage (The Masala Quest, hosted by Sarina Kamini), a documentary on competitive gaming (Respawn: India’s Esports Revolution, by George Mangala Thomas and Sangram Mawari), and a reality-horror competition merging gaming and immersive fear (Scary Goose, by Samar Iqbal).
The session was hosted by Mayank Shekhar.
The two winners were Djinn Patrol, backed by Miura Kite, formerly of Participant Media and known for Chinatown and Keep Sweet: Pray & Obey, with Jaya Entertainment, producers of Real Kashmir Football Club, also attached; and The Masala Quest, created and hosted by Sarina Kamini, an Indian-Australian cook, author and self-described “spice evangelist.”
The summit also unveiled the Content India Trends Report, whose findings made for bracing reading. Daoud Jackson, senior analyst at OMDIA, set the tone: “By 2030, online video in India will nearly double the revenue of traditional TV, becoming the main driver of growth.” He noted that in 2025, India produced a quarter of all YouTube videos globally, overtaking the United States, while Indians collectively spend 117 years daily on YouTube and 72 years on Instagram. Traditional subscription TV is declining as free TV and connected TV gain ground, forcing broadcasters to innovate. “AI-generated content is just 2 per cent of engagement,” Jackson added, “highlighting the dominance of high-quality human content. The key for Indian media companies is scaling while monetising effectively from day one.”
Hannah Walsh, principal analyst at Ampere Analysis, added hard numbers to the picture. India produced over 24,000 titles in January 2026 alone, with 19,000 available internationally. The country now accounts for 12 per cent of Asia-Pacific content spend, up from 8 per cent in 2021, outpacing both Japan and China. Key exporters include JioStar, Zee Entertainment, Sony India, Amazon and Netflix, delivering over 7,500 Indian-produced titles abroad each year. The top importing markets are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, the United States and the Philippines. Scripted content dominates globally at 88 per cent, with crime dramas and children’s and family titles performing particularly strongly.
Manoj Dobhal, chief executive and executive director of Dish TV India, framed the summit’s ambition squarely. “Stories don’t need translation. They need a platform, discovery, and reach, local or global,” he said. “India produces more movies than any country, our streaming platforms compete globally, and our tech and creators win international awards. Yet fragmentation slows growth. Producers, platforms, and tech move in different lanes. We need shared spaces, collaboration, and an ecosystem where ideas, technology, and people meet. That is why we built Content India.”
The data, the pitches and the prize money all pointed to the same conclusion: India is not waiting for the world to discover its stories. It is building the infrastructure to sell them.
