It's questionable whether online 'influencers' actually influence anyone beyond getting them to watch or listen to their show. What they definitely have is an audience, and that is valuable to the advertisers and marketers who do influence people, as well as prospective guests who want to promote themselves or a cause. I think influencers' main value for advertisers is acting as a magnet for certain demographics, providing another way to do targeted marketing.
Maybe Joe's viewers will all start doing stand-up. :-)
There was a marketing study of influencers from Rakuten Marketing that indicates that advertising through influencer channels produces positive sales results. But again, it's not clear that the influencer actually drove the purchases, versus just drawing an audience that was predisposed to make those purchases in the first place.
Which is an absolutely fascinating case-study! It's easy to just write it off as "kids mimicking content creator for attention" but it goes so much deeper than this because it's a learned subconscious reaction to stress. It's like tapping your feet or biting your nails but interesting because it's verbal. It's kinda like if you say "like" or "um" to fill space when talking you never really have to think about it but you can stop if you practice.
Not true. The owner of a TV station gets paid, and they aren't influencing anyone. They're simply brokering advertising. I'm open to evidence that influencers actually exert personal influence on their audience, I just haven't seen any yet.
