February 15, 2019 | Vox

The latest Instagram influencer frontier? Medical promotions.

Louise Roe has denim that’s ripped in all the right places, a bikini-ready body year-round, a husband and baby who look like they were picked from a catalog, and 698,000 Instagram followers. She also has the skin condition psoriasis, a chronic autoimmune disease defined by flaky, inflamed red or white patches of skin, and she wants you to know all about it.

Actually, she needs to tell you about her psoriasis on Instagram; otherwise, her paid partnership with Celgene, a biotechnology company that produces the patent-protected psoriasis medication Otezla, would presumably be canceled.

In recent years, businesses have adapted their advertising strategies to the rise in social media use, specifically on Instagram. The app is one of the most popular social networks, surpassed only by its parent company, Facebook, and is projected to have more than 111 million users in 2019 — more than half of whom are between ages 18 and 29. The high level of Instagram user engagement gives companies an opportunity to capitalize on users with thousands of followers, aptly dubbed “influencers,” through paid advertising partnerships.

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