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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

#161

Post by bedast »

tomjen3 wrote: post #53
bedast wrote: post #11

Instagram is one of the last social media platforms I use. It's mostly about my dogs. I follow mostly greyhound people. My feed is about half greyhounds and half ads. Increasing ad load from that? I guess it's time to retire my Instagram account. This might be the thing that gets me to bite the bullet and actually check out Pixelfed.

Can I ask you, what are those ads you see? Are they mostly related to greyhounds?

Almost no greyhound related ads. I see occasional pet related ads, but not nearly as common as bogus health supplements, diabetes related stuff (I'm diabetic), random garbage I don't care about, Amazon, and other accounts.

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

#162

Post by _visgean »

rchaud wrote: post #73
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…

There is no long term for IG or FB as we know it. MetaVR and MetaAI is what those companies will become. All IG/FB can do now is squeeze as much ad revenue as possible while there are still hundreds of millions using it daily.

There it no reason to kill existing product when you have a new. Merging instagram into metaverse won't make sense until people have some reasonable way to experience metaverse - and majority does not and wont have for a foreseable future.. And even then it wont be appropriate in many context where people watch instagram these days - public transport, work, toilets.. cant imagine anyone bringing their vr/ar goggles to these places..

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

#163

Post by tomjen3 »

netsharc wrote: post #156
tomjen3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask you, what are those ads you see? Are they mostly related to greyhounds?

FB/IG has a "Why am I seeing this ad?" and you can see what demographics being targeted are, e.g. location, gender, age range. Funnily enough, Facebook has been showing me ads for lingerie the last few days, although I put in real age and gender (male), and it should know I'm single...

It is probably somebody trying to sell to a new market (men buying gifts for their dates). I got so many ads for dating sites and related crap when I set my FB status to single.

I will never get why FB shows so terrible ads when they supposedly know so much about us.

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

#164

Post by bedast »

netsharc wrote: post #156
tomjen3 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I ask you, what are those ads you see? Are they mostly related to greyhounds?

FB/IG has a "Why am I seeing this ad?" and you can see what demographics being targeted are, e.g. location, gender, age range. Funnily enough, Facebook has been showing me ads for lingerie the last few days, although I put in real age and gender (male), and it should know I'm single...

What have you been searching/browsing? ;)

Instagram uses Facebook/Meta algorithms for serving ads, which includes behavior. I almost never post anything about diabetes in Instagram, but because many other sites (ie: reddit) use Facebook libraries for whatever reason they are using them, Facebook knows I'm diabetic, and I get served ads for diabetes products, bogus supplements that "cure" diabetes, health programs that use diabetes products for non-diabetes purposes (yes, this is a thing), and so on.

If a site uses a FB tracker library (which is going to be part of FB based auth), your usage is tracked and info based on that is used to serve ads across all Meta products.

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

#165

Post by jcfrei »

fullshark wrote: post #144
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.

Good point though I would argue you can still see the same dynamics on a subreddit level.

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

#166

Post by olyjohn »

justapassenger wrote: post #72
laundermaf wrote: post #32

No joke, on Facebook I'm already seeing one ad for every 2 real posts. On Instagram it's about 1:3 on the home and 1:5 on the reels (but I suppose it depends on how fast you scroll). It's already quite disgusting at this stage. Are they going to flip it to 2 ads every one post? How long before unskippable 30-second ads?

Read the article? They don’t increase ads in feed, but add them to new places like explore.

For now.

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

#167

Post by olyjohn »

tablespoon wrote: post #47
dclowd9901 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the smart play here is de-politicizing Facebook. No more politicians, no more political groups, no more political ads. Bring it back to being about people and connections.

> I feel like the smart play here is de-politicizing Facebook. No more politicians, no more political groups, no more political ads. Bring it back to being about people and connections. Unfortunately, it's not that simple. A lot of people "connect" online by raging about political obsessions. A "no politics" rule will make a lot of people angry, especially if it wasn't like that from the start so violates their expec…

Good riddance. Let them be angry.

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

#168

Post by jerojero »

aNoob7000 wrote: post #44
ledauphin wrote: post #10

i check Instagram maybe a couple of times a year and it's almost exactly like watching your college friends' kids age from afar. Each time you see them, the sensation of how much they've grown is so overwhelming that you can hardly resist saying something along the lines of "I can't believe how big they've gotten!". except with Instagram it's, "this is so much less usable than the last time I tried it. Why does anybo…

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).

Most people dont use instagram just to follow their friends, but strangers.

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

#169

Post by rmsaksida »

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.

In many countries, SMS isn't free (or didn't used to be). That's the reason why Whatsapp was successful in the first place, it was cheaper to use Whatsapp over data than to use SMS for texting.

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

#170

Post by Cipater »

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…

I pay for Spotify. I use it every day. I don't understand how anyone can use the free tier.

You should consider paying for the service because what you're doing is self torture.

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