Social media: celebrities are using YOU to earn the big money

Culture&Arts Nilgun Salim
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These advertisements do not represent something new in the contemporary media and using the face of a celebrity to sell a product became something extremely common. Although it became something common, this trend grew exponentially in the last three years due to the popularity gained by the social networks.

The other day, football icon Cristiano Ronaldo received a TAG Heuer watch. He took a shot with the watch, posted the snap on Instagram using the #dontcrackunderpressure caption (the slogan of the company) and thanked TAG Heuer for the kind gesture.

From January, until now, more than 200,000 posts from Instagram were accompanied by the #ad, #sp or #sponsored hashtag, writes platform Captiv8, which labeled these celebrities as ‘influencers’.

For the brands, this represents a great way to reach potential customers. For example, Cristiano Ronaldo has more than 240 million followers and fans on his social media pages (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter).

Also, social media is helping companies to target young customers who are the most active users on these social platforms. Most times, these youngsters are following celebrities on Snapchat, believing they are getting exclusive sneak peeks from their personal lives. In this way, these brands are interacting with the young audience much effectively than through a traditional advertising.

However, this is not cheap. These stars or ‘influencers’, with more than three million followers on social media are capable of earning $187 500 for a single post.

According to Forbes, Ronaldo’s online profile helped him earn $88m last year, making him the world’s highest-paid athlete.