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Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

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

#141

Post by fullshark »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #85
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #65

I like instagram, in the same way that I like drinking. I know it's generally bad for me, but I enjoy it. There is a surprising amount of high quality posts about tech, science, history, music, and probably whatever you are interested in. Many of which would be worthy of the hn front page if they were a short blog instead of a short video. It is worthwhile if you can avoid the traps of attractive people dancing, casu…

> I like instagram, in the same way that I like drinking. I know it's generally bad for me, but I enjoy it. I agree so much, really dig the analogy :D

In other words, it's a vice.

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

#142

Post by cityzen »

jbullock35 wrote: post #115
KptMarchewa wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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 .

Right, from zuck himself?

"They trust me — dumb fucks," says Zuckerberg in one of the instant messages, first published by former Valleywag Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider, and now confirmed by Zuckerberg himself in Jose Antonio Vargas's New Yorker piece. Zuckerberg now tells Vargas, "I think I've grown and learned a lot" since those instant messages.

https://www.gawker.com/5636765/facebook-ceo-admits-to-callin...

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

#143

Post by darkwizard42 »

ketchupdebugger wrote: post #135
panda888888 wrote: post #128

The ratio of ads to real posts on Instagram is already terrible. If it gets any worse, I'll probably stop using Instagram due to frustration. I'm pretty fed up as is. For grid posts (not sure what they're called, but the part that's not stories, where you scroll down), my feed is currently as follows: 1) Friend 2) Friend 3) Ad for a prescription medicine I'll never take. Totally irrelevant. 4) Friend 5) Friend 6) Ad…

I dont see how they can increase this any more. If they increase anymore it will literally be every other post is an ad. Unless its consecutive ad posts. Either way its bad for the end user.

Yikes, consecutive ad posts are going to be terrible. Honestly nothing feels worse on Youtube than having TWO ads play. I agree that they are nearing the highest amount of ad load they can get. It is terrible on Stories as it is in the Newsfeed.

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

#144

Post by fullshark »

jcfrei wrote: post #39

The rise and fall of all social networks is inevitable. Like many things they follow this dynamic where they go out of fashion when too many use it. Currently everybody is moving to TikTok and there's lots of good content there. But that platform too will fade eventually and another one appear.

I thought the same was true as reddit has become terrible imo, but it's still very popular and users seem heavily engaged. The key I think is human curation, even if reddit mods are frequently found to be terrible in odd ways, they keep things healthy compared to AI moderators that eventually end up killing the network.

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

#145

Post by Shish2k »

bastardoperator wrote: post #105
aNoob7000 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think the future is in messenger apps. Why login to Instagram or Facebook to see updates when you can have a family/friends group in Whatsapp/Telegram/Signal (pick your poison).

Why login to anything at all? Why use whatsapp, telegram, or signal when every phone already does this and has been doing this for years? I have all of my friends and family in specific groups devoid of any specific apps. To be fair people were saying the same thing 20 years ago when AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger and Yahoo messenger were the big thing. All messaging platforms will eventually die is my experience thus far.

Why rely on electronics at all when you can just send smoke signals? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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

#146

Post by ym496 »

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…

Use NewPipe. It's really good and with no ads.

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

#147

Post by hotpotamus »

panda888888 wrote: post #128

The ratio of ads to real posts on Instagram is already terrible. If it gets any worse, I'll probably stop using Instagram due to frustration. I'm pretty fed up as is. For grid posts (not sure what they're called, but the part that's not stories, where you scroll down), my feed is currently as follows: 1) Friend 2) Friend 3) Ad for a prescription medicine I'll never take. Totally irrelevant. 4) Friend 5) Friend 6) Ad…

I don't even notice what ads I'm getting really. I mostly get tons of suggested posts. For a long time it was obvious political rage engagement bait, and I don't have much reason to engage with that, especially what they were trying to feed me.

Now I seem to get stuff tailored to pilots - like Airbus vs Boeing jokes, stuff about cockpit controls that mostly goes over my head, etc... I'm not a pilot, and I don't think I'd ever want to fly a plane, but it is a lot nicer as far as what shows up in the feed.

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

#148

Post by addicted »

nradov wrote: post #90
foobarian wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanism is called Visionary CEO and good luck with that.

In this case the CEO's stated vision is to dominate the AR/VR market. So in that context it makes sense for Meta to treat legacy properties like Instagram as cash cows and maximize short-term revenue at the expense of long-term growth. That revenue can be used to finance new AR/VR products. We'll find out in 10 years if Mark Zuckerberg was a visionary genius or an idiot.

As Google is finding out though that user trust is easy to break and can greatly impact your future products’ success.

If Meta continues destroying users’ faith in Instagram the way they have in Facebook, it will gravely hurt any attempt by Meta to build their AR/VR empires.

A good counter example is Apple, a company which actually realized how impactful this can be with their Mac business.

Apple’s Mac business is their second smallest, ahead only of the iPad (which thanks to shared development costs and components with iOS is almost certainly more profitable) and behind accessories, services and iPhone.

And yet, Apple invested significant R&D, and spent years publicly apologizing for the state of the mac, humiliatingly reversing course in some decisions and promising they would do better until they actually did better.

Because Apple recognized that their commitment to the Mac meant their customers could trust them. And the years they were ignoring it (probably in a misguided belief that the relatively small size of the segment meant it didn’t matter) led to a massive loss of trust that was clearly spilling over into their iOS products as well.

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

#149

Post by orangepurple »

bombcar wrote: post #112
orangepurple wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I never heard of this casino house rule

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

#150

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

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…

If you like Spotify's product, why not pay for it? The ads go away then. I literally converted to premium after the first ad as I hated it so much.
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