With her pink hair and angelic appearance, Imma has so far attracted almost 400,000 followers on Instagram. Now she is making some outings in Shanghai to promote her music. Despite not being a real man, she does, however, sometimes wear a mask.

Imma was created by Riot Games Inc. and then went viral precisely by them and management by Aww .

Brands are expected to spend up to $ 15 billion a year on influencer marketing by 2022, up from $ 8 billion last year, according to Business Insider Intelligence.

A growing portion of this money belongs to virtual influencers and traditional marketing is experiencing a serious disruption.

"Virtual influencers, though fake, have real business potential," says Christopher Travers, founder of virtualhumans.org, a website that documents the industry. "In the long run, they are cheaper than people to work, they are 100% controllable, they can appear in many places at once and most importantly, they do not age and never die."

According to Travers, there are currently about 125 virtual influencers on social media. More than 50 of them debuted on social media over the 18 months to June 2020. Meanwhile, there are more than 5,000 virtual influencers on YouTube.

These "influencers" can attract partnerships with different brands and win lucrative deals.

According to OnBuy, so far, the "virtual model" that has made the most profit is called Lil Miquela . She has done promotions for Calvin Klein, Prada and other fashion brands. OnBuy estimates that Lil Miquela will make about $ 11.7 million by the end of this year.

Even many animation and entertainment companies, or figures like Scooter Brown (manager Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande) are investing in this new industry.

By normally moving the photos that appear to you on Instagram, you can think that Imma is human. She makes normal movements, has some videos on her profile, shiny hair and elegant dress.

"When we created her look, we wanted to create a person the way overseas people think of the natives in Japan. Imma was originally created as an art project, not marketing, but it started attracting ads and sponsorships. "We believed in the possibilities of the future and then the market followed us."

Imma also has her virtual brother, known as "Plustic Boy":

Source: Bloomberg Business