Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline • Hacker News Board

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#111

Post by CuriouslyC » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

floor2 wrote: post #94

datadata wrote: post #54

It seems so obvious to us that this is a short term win at the expense of the long term. I wonder if data driven companies like this are locked into local minimums via tons of short term optimizations to boost metrics. In optimization algorithms like stochastic gradient descent, some form of entropy (crucially temporarily decreasing fitness) or exploration (having parallel evaluations of the fitness function) is nece…

It takes a better alternative for people to change though. Spotify is borderline unusable to me now, it's about 50/50 ads/songs. But I still haven't uninstalled it. I think my usage is now something like, after listening to 5 songs and 5 ads, I get frustrated and switch to a podcast. But, I don't know of any alternative with less ads that works on my phone, so I'm still a user (despite listening for an hour a week in…

Get a modified youtube app with adblock and background play.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#112

Post by bombcar » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

orangepurple wrote: post #103

bombcar wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect they're still pretending it has growth left; once it's clear that they DO NOT have much growth left, the stock will slowly settle to a "reasonable" p/e. Or suddenly plummet to one, who knows.

> the stock will slowly settle to a "reasonable" p/e Which law of physics is this the result of?

If there’s no growth forecasted investors are less likely to bid the stock up, as other investments may do better.

Note that “reasonable” may not be Buffet’s desired p/e.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#113

Post by bastardoperator » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:20 PM UTC

In other words, they're going to kill instagram next. Meta is over. Now we all get to watch it die an extremely slow death.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#114

Post by pc86 » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

jawngee wrote: post #45

I advertise pretty heavily on Instagram because, of all the platforms I advertise on, it's the most bang for the buck. I get more conversions from Instagram than anywhere else by almost a factor of 5. This is going to kill engagement. I'd rather pay more for clicks than now be jammed into a crowded feed for hostile eyeballs.

What market are you in? I tried IG ads before and it never really worked compared to other platforms (including FB).

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#115

Post by jbullock35 » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

KptMarchewa wrote: post #98

BobbyJo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, Mark has allowed Facebooks mission to change from "giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" to "optimize ad revenue from a pre-existing group of users", and is now doing the same to Instagram. Look at the changes made to Facebook in the last five years and tell me, with a straight face, that they were all made with the original mission statement in mind. A Visionar…

>"giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" If that was ever the case. In words of Mark Zuckerberg "dumb fucks".

The evidence for that quotation is weak. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32937710#32938981.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#116

Post by harywilke » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:23 PM UTC

I already left because they had too many adds. I was never a heavy user but over the last few years i saw the ads increase to over 25% of my feed. no thanks.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#117

Post by adventured » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #101

Facebook is dying. In my social network hardly anybody is using it anymore. And everybody agrees: Facebook is an ad spoiled crap network with useless content. I am so surprised that nobody at Facebook recognises this and tries to improve upon. Make me the CEO and I will fix it :)

Large shareholders want you to suck the value in the company dry to attempt to artificially pump the stock shorter term. They'd never hire anybody that would actually do what's necessary to fix what's going on. They want the short-term pump approach put into action, they don't care about ten years from now. Microsoft also dealt with this scenario during the Ballmer years (flat stock, very low PE, massive buybacks & dividends; which did nothing for the stock).

Facebook is caught in the IBM self-fulfilling spiral of death. It's the financial engineering direction as the stock wilts and the multiple is compressed lower; that FB began buying back its overvalued stock, destroying its cash because they had no idea what to do with it, was a big signal.

During October-December 2021 they spent $19.2 billion on stock buybacks. Around 58 million shares. The stock was ~$330-$340 then, now it's $136 (those 58m shares are worth sub $8b now). It's a clown show. Those people have no idea what they're doing.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#118

Post by thiht » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:28 PM UTC

I just opened my Instagram feed. It's now:

- 2 posts from people I follow

- 1 ad

- 1 "suggestion"

So half of my feed is not my feed. It's slightly less than a month ago when it was 2 thirds of ads/suggestions.

1 of the ads was also extremely intrusive in that it was related to a private health issue I had a few weeks ago.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#119

Post by jazzyjackson » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

doitLP wrote: post #49

I recently deleted my instagram account after noticing a steady drop in the frequency of new posts from friends. However I always used the browser version and I was never served a single ad. Maybe this was because I was in some long lived experiment group (unlikely) or maybe because the mobile web app doesn’t have ads (also unlikely). I’m curious the reason.

I also use instagram via mobile browser only and I get 0 ads in my feed.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#120

Post by adventured » Wed, Oct 05, 2022, 4:31 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #74

rchaud wrote: post #68

The ad-driven business model is why social media apps became monsters eventually. The real change that drove all those billions in ad money was simple: under no circumstances can the user's scroll experience end due to the inventory of scrollable blocks ("content") running out. The user doesn't know right away that the software will scroll infinitely. Email has an end, your IMs have an end. With social media, you hav…

I doubt that. Reddit and HN are mostly ad free and they have the same degree of addictive outrage bait. For instance, every article about Google will be about privacy violations or sunsetting things. Every article about Apple will be about repairing or CSAM. The people who post these comments will always come back and post them. And the usual war will ensue. After all you can argue vim v BSD and GPL v Emacs for absol…

Reddit is only partially ad free because they have never figured out how to load it up with decent paying advertising, not for a lack of wanting to. Reddit has always garnered far lower ad rates than most of their peers, and their ad system has always been far worse. They have struggled with filling inventory at good rates since the first day they began running ads.