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Instagram Has Become SkyMall

clivethompson.medium.com

161–170 of 341 posts

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#162
post #144

I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and simil…

I have a similar experience on Instagram in that the ads often seem well-tailored to my interests there, which are exclusively outdoor sports and photography. But I have to say that I am disciplined about training the algorithm. I never click on content outside those interests (even if it looks interesting to me). And I occasionally go to the “discover” tab and click only the images that align with those interests. A…

> And there are so many ads now. It feels like 25-33% of my feed, which is absurd. Every set of stories has an ad between them.

I believe it's published somewhere that both Facebook and Instagram insert an ad for every 3 news feed items or so.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#163
If you’re in search of a Skymall alternative, check out Hammacher Schlemmer (https://www.hammacher.com/).

The brand has existed for over a hundred years, they have a physical store in NYC, a website, and a catalog (still being sent out).

I just looked at a few products for sale on their homepage: make sure not to miss the transparent canoe or the kickball dart board.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting how this exposes the dynamics of ad-space. Advertisements as points in a metric space A. Clicking ads as a contractive mapping C:A->A. Class-action lawsuit ads as a fixed point in A when iterating C. This must imply something interesting about human psychology or ad economics, or both. Why does the fixed point end up as class action suits and not something else? It's not what I would have expected.

I don’t think you can infer human nature here as much as psychology of advertisers. I think it was GrubHub that started advertising on porn sites at one point and published some interesting findings from that. The reason the started to advertise there was because it was cheap and because other food related businesses were not advertising there. What they noticed is that most ads on porn sites are for porn, so ads for…

Thinking about it, one of the marketing received wisdom things is that you often want to associate your product with sex. What is probably the easiest way in the world to associate your product with sex?

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#165
post #144

I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and simil…

Instagram ads are the only ads I like and I am insanely anti-ad. They're currently showing me ads for furniture and house stuff. What I find frustrating is there is no way to view my recently seen ads. They'll cut off early in stories and I'll not be able to get them back.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#166
post #144

I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and simil…

Instagram ads are the only ads I like and I am insanely anti-ad. They're currently showing me ads for furniture and house stuff. What I find frustrating is there is no way to view my recently seen ads. They'll cut off early in stories and I'll not be able to get them back.

I agree Instagram ads are usually good and certainly the only ones I've ever seen properly targeted to me - I've even used it 2-3 times for high value things - but I'm still annoyed that it keeps trying to sell me startup Viagra for millenials. ("hims" and "Roman")

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#167
post #98

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

Whenever someone tells me a video URL that I decide to invest time in looking at, Grammarly or Liberty Mutual will tend to barge in, and interrupt whatever flow that was. Sure, I remember the brand names. And I'm going to be sure to remember that those brands spent a lot of money wasting my time.

Liberty Mutual. Same here. Will never buy from them.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#168
post #144

I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and simil…

I agree. Honestly, as a consumer, Instagram is the best advertising experience I've ever had. It's scarily good. I find sales from e.g. Cole Hann, Brooks Brothers, Piloti, etc all the time. It's quite possibly the only platform where I would say I bought an item specifically because I saw it an ad.

Im the same. In 30 years of using the internet ive only saw an ad,clicked through and bought twice. Both times were clothing from Instagram.

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#169
post #144

I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and simil…

I have a similar experience on Instagram in that the ads often seem well-tailored to my interests there, which are exclusively outdoor sports and photography. But I have to say that I am disciplined about training the algorithm. I never click on content outside those interests (even if it looks interesting to me). And I occasionally go to the “discover” tab and click only the images that align with those interests. A…

> I never click on content outside those interests (even if it looks interesting to me)

That’s a little sad isn’t it? We’re too scared to click on content that looks interesting in case it angers the algorithm :-)

Re: Instagram Has Become SkyMall

#170
post #144

I get great ads on Instagram. Generally, they’re niche products related to my interests from small companies I’ve never heard of before. Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and simil…

Thinking about it I dont see many ads on the internet but I do on Instagram and have clicked on them multiple times and been happy to find some stores which I wouldn't otherwise.
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