The era of digital technology has made social media influencers essential players in the creation and distribution of content. Due to their ability to connect with and engage audiences through personal stories, they have become the subject of research in the fields of marketing and communication. Brands pay influencers to promote products or services through social media, as they have significant power to reach and engage audiences. The focus of this paper is on influencers and their methods of content creation for different purposes. The aim of this paper is to determine whether consumers can differentiate between authentic and paid content. The goal of the research is to establish how audiences perceive the differences between authentic content and paid content created by influencers through storytelling. Four secondary objectives have arisen from the main goal: 1. Analyze the content and reach of storytelling posts by well-known Croatian influencers on Instagram 2. Determine the opinions of Croatian influencers about creating different types of content on Instagram 3. Assess how readers perceive content on Instagram 4. Investigate whether readers can recognize the difference between original and paid storytelling. Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be used, including one quantitative survey through an online questionnaire and two qualitative studies—content analysis of Instagram posts and semi-structured in-depth interviews with well-known Croatian influencers. The research results will provide a scientific contribution to the study of digital media content, focusing on the social network Instagram and the relatively unexplored area where the boundaries between original and paid content are blurred.