Though there are a handful of big ticket male influencers, the market as a whole is low on Y chromosomes. According to Klear, more than 80 per cent of the Instagram posts tagged with #ad in 2017 were posted by women. (And, like everything in fashion, the most influential are largely young, thin and white). The number of sponsored posts also grew by 198 per cent from 2016 to 2017, as smaller brands followed where the big boys led. This could also partly be attributed to new rules from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which demanded new levels of transparency. Since September 2017, the FTC has required all paid-for posts to be clearly labelled (most commonly with #ad or #sponsored). At the same time, Instagram introduced its ‘Paid Partnership’ feature, which clearly flags any commercial hook-ups. Some believed that this would hurt the influencer market – part of its appeal for brands, at least at first, was that paid-for posts were often indistinguishable from an influencer’s day-to-day content. But it seems the opposite may actually be true. “Their audiences are aware [that posts are paid for],” says Odell. “People want the transparency but I don’t think they mind that it’s happening, because they want to consume this content and they can’t have this content if the person’s not getting those sponsorships.” It’s another big shift from the way old media worked, and yet more reason for brands to double-down on their influencer budgets.

Some not-quite-influencers even go so far as to fake partnerships in order to boost their profiles. “Ordinary people are claiming on Instagram to have brand deals, with established companies, that don’t exist,” says Chris Stokel-Walker, a journalist and author of an upcoming book on YouTube. “You can’t trust whether an influencer has or hasn’t got a relationship with a brand – and if they do, you can’t tell whether they’re shilling it because they like it, or because the money was good.”