Net Red Data Fraud Is Hot Again. Who Made It A Big Business?

In June 2019, the Beijing police cracked a criminal case using illegal App to malicious quantity and traffic fraud. It involves a mobile phone called App, and its main purpose is to provide data fraud services for micro-blog users.

This is not an example. The phenomenon of net red data fraud is almost everywhere. In China's most popular social media platform, micro-blog, an ordinary user can not help but receive the "powder" advertisement's private letter. In this advertisement, praise, comment, star influence and video volume are all marked price. 400 yuan has one hundred thousand "zombie powder". Making a net red is no longer a dream. From social platforms to community providers, to live and short video platforms, the sale of these false data is common.

Let micro-blog's praise, comment and forwarding of their own idol is a black box operation method that fans know very well. Net red people can also make false data and control public opinion by such App and illegal agencies, which is called "control evaluation" in the Internet world. Micro-blog's chaotic data not only confuse ordinary netizens, but also let merchants' marketing costs go bad.

According to Mediakix's data, this year, the marketing cost of brand marketing will reach US $8 billion 500 million, which is expected to exceed US $10 billion next year.

However, a joint study conducted by Cheq and University of Baltimore at University of Baltimore, University of Maryland, shows that advertisers will lose $1 billion 300 million this year, including buying fans and hiring people to brush or comment. This figure is expected to grow to $1 billion 500 million next year.

Roberto Cavazos, a professor and economist at University of Baltimore who commissioned the report by Cheq, analyzed 25% of the ten thousand net red products. Another survey of 800 marketing agencies and brands found that 2/3 of them had worked with net red with false fans. Statistics like these give Cavazos the conclusion that 50% of the interactive activity data of the sponsorship content is false.

The situation in China is not so good. The overseas edition of the people's Daily published an article entitled "net red" product should be really red in 2018. It borrowed from the research data of the media people, ah Shang Shu, and attacked the false behavior of China's net red. In a push article, he asked questions about China's fashion public No. 50 list, using data monitoring tool Kolrank to conduct data monitoring of the 50 accounts. The result is a big surprise. At least 11 data in 50 accounts are doubtful. In the normal direction of the data after the article is pushed, the data of these accounts appear at a certain time.

According to the cover news report, some experts pointed out that there are more than 1000 kinds of brush volume platforms in China, and the total scale of the brush industry has reached about 9000000. According to the order information of a certain brush volume platform in the ground, the data that is brushed up in the whole industry are: the volume of the article reading and the evaluation of the electricity supplier.

In net red industry, net red income usually depends on the number of fans. Celebrities with tens of millions of (legal sources) fans, like top fashion bloggers such as Chiara Ferragni, are said to be able to earn $12 thousand by issuing a post, while Li Jiaqi, who has 29 million 50 thousand fans, has a surprising price of 800 thousand yuan.

Net red market competition is intense, the net red is the real brand competition. Cavazos pointed out that in addition to buying activity, some net red also issued false sponsorship content, "the purpose is to deceive the brand business, let them believe that they have reliable performance records, and find the future employer for themselves." Last year, The Atlantic reported that people who wanted to get the opportunity to speak for brand endorsements would often adopt this strategy in the Atlantic. This is also true in China. Many of the first net red clubs will buy tens of thousands of "fake fans" with hundreds of pieces to try out products on the branding business, and say that they are working with the brand to increase the amount of real fans.

In an interview with the Atlantic monthly, a net red said: "these networks will adopt some way of expression to make people think they have established a good cooperative relationship with this brand."

Cavazos also said: "netting fraud has brought other high indirect costs, especially the erosion of trust and the potential impact on brand image."

In the face of such problems, brands are bound to worry about their brand image being damaged. The beauty giant L'OREAL group has made a response to this. L'OREAL's Active cosmetics department is seeking to cooperate with micro-influencers, which has fans of around ten thousand people. L'OREAL thinks that the probability of small network red and even micro net red data is less false, and the cost of cooperation with them is low and safe.

A micro-blog million class blogger revealed to BoF fashion business commentary that China net red data fraud is actually more common, but the brand has intensified supervision, so that many bloggers are afraid to act recklessly: "L'OREAL and other brand names will use similar Ad Master third party companies to monitor data. Once the data is wrong, the bloggers will be blacklisted", who needs to use the brand, which needs to be confirmed by the buyers and the media.

Although net red fraud is nothing new, it is still very difficult to comprehensively measure the scope of the problem.

Major brands are taking measures to crack down on net red fraud. Last year, Unilever's chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, said that Unilever will cooperate with Unilever to find out the existence of fans' counterfeiting behavior so as to "enhance transparency and help eradicate unhealthy practices in the whole ecosystem".

The brand takes measures, the platform is also hitting, but does such a strength play a deterrent role? The government and the public seem to have greater supervision.

In August 3rd of this year, the "red grass" community red book, which has 250 million users, has been taken off from Android's major app stores and apple App Store. Xiaohong book, which was founded in 2013, has grown rapidly into a well-known community e-commerce platform. With the growth, the App has been constantly exposed to false content, brush volume and illegal sales. Xiao Hong's anti cheating report released in July 17th says that the platform is dealing with these illegal posts, with an average of 4285 brushes per day.

Not long ago, in July, CCTV financial channel reported that there was a serious problem of fraud in the sale of so-called "net red" goods on the platform, causing the platform to suppress similar accounts. Coco Yang, a red MCN employee of a voice network, said: "the bloggers with too much data fraud will be shakes. Brush data is also not suitable for the development of net red long line.

But in this era of red net, the wrong understanding of content workers has led many people to think of the idea of becoming a net red and never worrying about their whole life. The success of a net red needs many forces, and a net red data falsification is obviously not a single person. Platforms, MCN agencies and public relations are also tied up. They work together to promote the operation of the business model.

After the rise of the net red profession, the West has often called it the influencer and the opinion leader. When part of net red has made full use of opportunistic means to make himself full of money, he also needs to consider his influence on society as a real opinion leader. Otherwise, he is not only hurt by consumers and brands, but also has his own long net career.