Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

I remember in the first dot-com bust, CPMs/CPCs fell like a rock, so everyone was cramming more ads onto pages to make up for it, which added a lot more inventory, which caused them to fall further. The market is much, much bigger these days, but I wonder if something similar (if smaller) will happen as everyone scrambles to monetize and increase revenue.

My experience as an advertiser on Meta's platforms is abysmal. Here was my morning:

I'm a photographer and just posted a few images from an engagement session. I wanted to tag them for the added engagement. On my personal Facebook page they both pop up on the search right away as they're local to me and in this case we have some mutual friends. On my business page I was only able to tag one of them as he had a unique name - the girl has a common name and Facebook oh-so-helpfully just gives me 5 or so random people from the entire world with her name with super tiny thumbnails to boot.

I decide to try and tag while on my personal account and realize I can't. I know I (and others) were able to in the past. I look for the setting that allows people to tag the images on my page. I can't find it. I look at their support and it mentions a button that clearly isn't there for me. I find a Youtube video from just a few months ago and their interface matches mine but the settings page for my page is completely different and is lacking many options, including the "Tagging ability" one that I need to turn on. I spent an hour on this to no avail, and like many of you I have a degree in computer science and I'm no stranger this.

Another thing I previously spent at least an hour on is the fact that my business Facebook page at the very top shows the amount of people I'm following - 9, and a competitor of mine doesn't. It's a stupid little thing but it's the first thing people see. Alas, I can't figure out how to change it.

On Instagram, when creating an "audience" for ads or boosted posts the option to center who the ad is shown to around a location/town with a specified radius in miles is just straight up broken for me. Doesn't work. I've tried reinstalling the app. The best "workaround" is to either list every single town I want to target in an area or physically drive to where I want it centered on and do it from there. The address input doesn't work but my current location does.

On PC, I can switch between my two business Instagram accounts once before it doesn't work and I need to log out and log back in.

Pushing reels instead of photos may or may not be a good business decision but it absolutely sucks for us photographers and when I tried to make one using their built in tool it demolished the quality of the photos I was using.

Also, ideally I'd be able to target people that are recently engaged to be married instead of people that have been for a while. People usually get a photographer (and venue) quickly, but my only option is to advertise to everyone that's engaged.

Meta - you want more money? Fix your shit. I'd love to give you more money but you make it so incredibly hard.

There are a couple of reasons why Reddit is ad-free for you:

- You use RES or an old version of Reddit, or access via a third-party app, which doesn't support ad display from Reddit's network

- You don't subscribe to subreddits where Reddit does have many advertisers. Crypto and investment subs in general are crawling with ads. Reddit can't attract the same breadth of advertisers that Google and FB can, so they can only show what ads they have in their inventory.

This is yet another reason to be apprehensive about Occulus and the "Facebook metaverse". I think it is only a matter of time before the mission for Occulus and the "Facebook metaverse" become similar to Facebook's current mission.

Not as good as the main part is audio discovery and auto playlists which are crap. Only pointed out since a lot of people tend to think its a 1:1 replacement not including the tech knowhow.