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Instagram Has Become SkyMall

clivethompson.medium.com

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Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#31

Post by Taek »

abendy wrote: post #7

The app itself can quickly turn into a never-ending scroll of infomercials from ads and accounts if you go beyond your social circle. Even if said accounts are not directly selling a product through the store feature, it's often advertising a desirable lifestyle not your own and general consumerism. How many photos are staged versus candid? This type of content-as-ad imagery is what the app lends itself best to versu…

I really dislike the suggestion "just have better self control". It's you versus an army of machine learning experts all tuning algorithm on personal data about you to learn your weaknesses and bait you into spending more time on the app.

Blaming the consumer ignores the adversarial role that the apps play in our lives.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#32

Post by 6f8986c3 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #24
Kiro wrote: post #8

I want to buy every single thing I see here. I've been really happy with the kind of ads I've been seeing lately. Instead of generic commercials I'm getting very specific products solving problems I have but didn't realize could be solved by a gadget.

I turned off my adblocker for Facebook as the ads started being far more relevant to me. Lots of interesting games or hackathons or nifty tools.

I use Brave and love my ad-free life.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#33

Post by perardi »

swatkat wrote: post #27
Kiro wrote: post #8

I want to buy every single thing I see here. I've been really happy with the kind of ads I've been seeing lately. Instead of generic commercials I'm getting very specific products solving problems I have but didn't realize could be solved by a gadget.

This reads like a subliminal message from John Carpenter’s “They Live”. I hope it’s sarcasm :)

Eh. There are a lot of ads. A lot of it is nonsense.

But: there are some diamonds in the rough. Do I really need another novelty tank top? No. Would I rather have an ad for a novelty tank top versus going back to the TV days and getting an ad for vitamins for senior citizens? No—give me my targeted ads, versus ads for drugs for old people.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#34

Post by Taek »

endisneigh wrote: post #17

Is there anyone else out there who refuses to buy something if they first learned about it from an ad?

Advertising works at a subconscious level. The more you see a product, the more you subconsciously learn to like and trust the product, especially if you are being exposed to that product in a trusted context (popular celebrity posing with it, etc).

I wish I had saved the link, but I read a study that showed people consistently underestimated how likely they were to buy a product after seeing an ad. They would buy it at much higher rates than the control group yet still assert that they were aware of the ad and not allowing it to influence their decisions.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#37

Post by kaszanka »

MattGaiser wrote: post #24
Kiro wrote: post #8

I want to buy every single thing I see here. I've been really happy with the kind of ads I've been seeing lately. Instead of generic commercials I'm getting very specific products solving problems I have but didn't realize could be solved by a gadget.

I turned off my adblocker for Facebook as the ads started being far more relevant to me. Lots of interesting games or hackathons or nifty tools.

Facebook seems to put a lot of effort into making ads hard to block too.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#38

Post by 55555 »

busymom0 wrote: post #16

> The thing is, SkyMall was a blast. It was so consistently unhinged — night-glow toilet seat! night-glow toilet seat actually turned out to be quite a popular product on Shark Tank. Kevin O'Leary put $100K for a 25 percent stake in it. https://mashable.com/deals/oct-11-shark-tank-bathroom-produc... There's been many copy cats all of which have tons of sales: https://www.amazon.com/illumibowl/s?k=illumibowl

The product preceded this company. It has been advertised on infomercials since at least the 90s and possibly earlier.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#39

Post by imgabe »

Something changed about Instagram recently, maybe it’s just because I changed how I used it. I used to only follow people I know, but then I added a few accounts that post Simpsons screenshots and clips. Now my feed is overrun with meme accounts, other Simpsons accounts I don’t follow, similar accounts for Futurama, Seinfeld, etc.

Admittedly, some are amusing sometimes, but it feels likes it’s turned into 9gag or something. It’s like if you follow one instance of something Instagram immediately assumes you exclusively want to see every single thing like that.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#40

Post by bscphil »

Taek wrote: post #34
endisneigh wrote: post #17

Is there anyone else out there who refuses to buy something if they first learned about it from an ad?

Advertising works at a subconscious level. The more you see a product, the more you subconsciously learn to like and trust the product, especially if you are being exposed to that product in a trusted context (popular celebrity posing with it, etc). I wish I had saved the link, but I read a study that showed people consistently underestimated how likely they were to buy a product after seeing an ad. They would buy it…

> still assert that they were aware of the ad and not allowing it to influence their decisions.

The claim you're responding to is not that they won't allow it to influence their decisions, but that they will actively refuse to even consider a product if they learned about it through an ad.

Most of the ads I encounter are through podcasts because I don't watch TV and ad blockers of various kinds apply everywhere else. I will never use or recommend Squarespace for any purpose, simply on principle.

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