Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s campaign is paying Social Media Influencers to inundate Instagram with messages. The campaign is reported to be offering social media influencers $150 to create content that tells why Bloomberg is “electable,” according to The Daily Beast.

Influencers are defined as people with 1,000 to 100,000 Instagram followers. The influencer market or peer market is growing as a worthy Marketing audience. According to Horowitz Research, there is a growing “power of peers” on the internet. Yet information on a company’s website is also critically important (not just to search engine robots).

Ads appear to be low on the scale behind peer marketing and video, but it is important to note that the research showed good ads often get shared. Thirty-two percent say they “frequently or occasionally share ads they enjoy with others.”

Also worth noting from this research is the importance of video as a purchase influencer. “Unpacking videos” are video of people taking a product out of the packaging and talking about the product.

The idea of paid influencers/peers is the wild west of marketing. It is for certain going to be more regulated in the future. For now, influencers will continue to influence. Surprisingly, word of mouth advertising — is that traditional or old-world marketing? — has been around since the dawn of civilization and is still a strong, viable marketing technique. One we all should pay attention to.

At least that is what I’ve heard.