The influencer era is growing, but the era of trust is arriving faster

The guest on this week's "Netizen with Atıf Ünaldı" program, which will air on Medyascope, was Aydın Sün, one of the invisible yet influential players in the world of technology and communication for years. The focus of the conversation was his new venture: DeepDeets.

Following Faselis, which is known to everyone familiar with the public relations sector in Turkey, they are now entering the influencer marketing side. At first glance, it might look like "just another influencer database." But that is not exactly the point. I think the truly important thing here is that the influencer economy is finally leaving its childhood behind.

Because for a long time, the influencer market operated a bit like a "noise economy." The one who shouted the loudest, appeared the most, and had the most followers won. Brands were also often captivated by the magic of numbers. 3 million followers. 50 thousand comments. 2 million views. It looks good. It looks very stylish in PowerPoint presentations.

But there is a very old truth in the history of marketing: A crowd does not always mean impact.

During the program, the example Aydın gave was very striking. They see 13 thousand comments under a post by a famous name working with an automotive brand. When they analyzed them, he says about 12 thousand of them were purchased comments. This is exactly where the turning point of the new era begins.

Because the issue is now shifting from the question "how many people saw it?" to "who saw it?"

I know this difference from the old media era. Years ago, even when talking about the hit counts of websites, there was the same problem. There was traffic, but no impact. People were buying numbers. Now a similar situation is happening on the influencer side. There might be a hundred thousand comments under a post, but if the majority of those comments are off-topic, fake, or unrelated to actual purchasing behavior, what emerges is essentially a digital facade.

Today, the biggest problem of the social media economy is not fake engagement. It is fake meaning.

This is where the interesting part of DeepDeets begins. Because the system does not just try to capture the post. It tries to solve whether the comment is real, whether it is related to the product, and whether the sentiment analysis is truly meaningful.

This is actually an effort for influencer marketing to emerge from its "adolescence."

Another important point is the issue of micro and nano influencers. I have been carefully watching local content creators for a long time. There are small accounts in Mersin that visit coffee shops, share children's activities, and produce content on mother-child relationships. Their follower counts might be low, but their impact is often higher than that of giant accounts.

Because people are no longer looking for perfect advertisements, but for trustworthy people.

A mother talking about a product she actually uses does not create the same impact as a post from a large account that promotes three different brands on the same day. As Aydın said, as the credibility of macro-influencers decreases, the impact of micro-influencers grows.

This reminds me of the early days of the internet.

In the beginning, the internet was a world of large portals. Then blogs appeared. Then forums. Then small channels on YouTube surpassed giant television stations. Now, the same transformation might be happening on the influencer side.

Because people no longer want to see "celebrities." They want to see people who are like them.

Another remarkable point was the technical side of DeepDeets. Reverse engineering, data collection, story archiving, automated reporting, AI-powered forecasting... These actually show that influencer marketing is starting to move away from amateurism and turn into a serious field of data science.

In the past, there was media monitoring in the PR world. People would look at who wrote what and where. Now the same thing is being carried over to the influencer world. Soon, brands will see not only themselves but also who their competitors are working with, which influencer actually brings sales, and which one is just generating digital noise.

At this point, things will get a bit tougher.

Because when data transparency begins, the sector loses its romanticism.

It will turn out that some "very large" accounts are not actually that large. And it will be understood that some small accounts create real impact. I think the biggest transformation of the influencer economy in the next few years will happen here.

At one time, television ratings were debated. Then internet traffic measurements were debated. Now it is time for social media impact to be truly measured.

The most valuable influencer of the future will likely not be the person with the highest number of followers, but the person with the highest trust score.

In Brief

* Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI have now agreed to have their new models tested by the American government before releasing them to the public. It seems the AI world is also moving toward the crash test logic used in the automotive sector. Soon, not just "how powerful is it?" but "what does it do when it goes out of control?" will be one of the standard tests.

* The European Union has reached a provisional agreement between the Council and the Parliament to make the implementation of the AI Act more streamlined. It appears that Europe is trying to keep regulations strict while simultaneously trying to shed its image as the "continent that remains too slow."

* Cloudflare has laid off approximately 1,100 people, citing a transition to an "agentic AI-first" model. The company announced that AI usage increased by 600% in just three months. It seems that in the tech world, the era of "AI will assist employees" is giving way to the era of "AI will replace some employees." I shared my more detailed views on layoffs and new employment policies in my article titled "Turkey's Employment Strategy in the Age of Artificial Intelligence."

* It is alleged that as a result of the exploitation of a security vulnerability in the Canvas infrastructure used worldwide, the data of students and faculty members at approximately 9,000 schools, including some popular universities in Turkey, has been affected. ShinyHunters is said to be behind the attack. The group announced that if a ransom is not paid by May 17, they will publish the data. It seems that universities now have to be not only academic institutions but also cybersecurity institutions.

* A curious cultural divide regarding pets has been drawing attention on social media recently. One segment defines their dogs and cats as their "child" or "offspring," while another segment argues that this is excessive anthropomorphism and takes a more traditional, ownership-focused approach to animals. It seems the debate is no longer just about love for animals; it has started to revolve around modern urban life, loneliness, the perception of family, and new-generation ways of forming emotional bonds. In psychology, this is called "anthropomorphism," the tendency to attribute human characteristics to non-human entities. What is interesting is that for many, the real concern is not just pets, but that the same emotional bond will be established with robots and AI systems in the future.