Brands and Creators See the Benefits of a Like-Free Instagram

On May 26, Instagram codified a change it had been experimenting with since 2019—giving users the option to hide the likes that show up both on their own posts and those in their feed. The move aimed to “depressurize people’s experience on Instagram,” and help people “feel good about the time they spend on our apps,” the social platform announced in a blog post. Six months on and most creators and brands can see the appeal. The change might have set off alarm bells in the metric-conscious creator economy, but social marketers say that de-emphasizing likes was emblematic of a shift in the influencer marketer world—away from front-facing, so-called vanity metrics such as likes—and toward better measures of interaction. “I’m sure you don’t remember the last photo you liked on Instagram,” said Ben Jeffries, co-founder and CEO of influencer marketing technology platform Influencer. “We are currently living in a world where we are scrolling constantly. A like is not seen as a success metric to a brand.” In a world without likes, influencer marketing is forced to mature, even as some brands are keen to hold on to these front-facing metrics. Like it or not Of course, there have long been other interactions on Instagram that brands and creators monitor, like clicks, conversions, saved posts and comments. These are all more valuable measures of a brand’s success than likes, said Ryan Detert, CEO of influencer marketing company Influential. Clicks and conversions, especially, are important for the so-called lower funnel of advertising—the actual purchasing of products—versus brand awareness. In the real world, likes don't always equal sales. Lifestyle and beauty-focused creator Kandee Johnson told Adweek she once partnered with a brand that had just previously worked with another influencer who generally got more likes on their posts. “I actually outsold that person who had four times the following and four times the likes as me,” Johnson said. “Likes are not an actual benefit to the brands …. it’s like eating cardboard cake with beautiful icing on the outside,” she added. And brands are not oblivious to the fact. Raul Tafur, vice president of paid social at media agency Canvas Worldwide, said when brands are deciding which creators to work with, it's more important to evaluate their relevance to the brand, the campaign’s objective and the possibility for a long-term partnership than their like counts. “I am thankful to have great clients that realize front-end [metrics] are very visual metrics and not directly related to high performance,” Tafur said. However, some brands prefer the creators they partner with to keep their like counts public. An agency executive—requesting anonymity—said a brand they were working with once ended their partnership with a creator because he kept his like counts hidden. “On the back end we do have data where we can pull analytics, but for this one particular brand, they were just taken aback [about why a creator] would hide their engagement,” the executive said. Instagram Begins Testing Feature That Reminds Users to ‘Take a Break’ A maturing market The validity and reliability of likes as a success measure have been challenged given how easy it is for accounts to buy followers, leading to high followings and low likes and interactions. Detert said some brands might worry that a creator who hides their like counts are trying to lie about their popularity, but added that taking this view is pessimistic. “The most negative [interpretation] is creators are trying to obfuscate something,” Detert said. On the flip side, “they’re signaling to their audiences that they care about mental health.” As likes become de-prioritized, it will become easier for brands to find quality creators who drive real engagement and sales, instead of those who are popular. “[This] … washes away certain types of influencer agencies or influencers that themselves were banking on [likes] in order to sell themselves,” Canvas Worldwide's Tafur said. Facebook, Instagram Roll Out Features to Help People Remember Their Best Moments of 2021 Ultimately, the industry's move to de-emphasize likes is helping legitimize influencer marketing as a whole, enabling it to compete better with other forms of advertising by allowing it to tout more meaningful metrics. “It’s actually enabled the influencer marketing industry to be on a more level playing field,” Jeffries said.