Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 115 posts

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#81

Post by buboard »

Theodores wrote: post #79
buboard wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You forgot to post your affiliate link for Hill Brothers! Pffft. Are you new to "accidental" comment product placement? It's all about brand awareness. Brands like the delicious Lavazza coffee i m drinking right now.

Actually the brand you mentioned seem to be legit, as in not one face of a vast multinational. They do just the brand you mention. They are not owned by Nestle or anyone else. Meanwhile, Hill Bros are anything but. They were owned by Nestle but are now part of this outfit: http://www.mzb-group.com/en/brands It is crazy how the core product is merchandised to different people around the world. In the UK we get one of…

I would think that the differences in american marketing is because they are selling to a market that is 4-20 times larger than any european market, so you get more common denominators. Plus they have a longer tradition of consumerist culture.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#83

Post by Cthulhu_ »

thundergolfer wrote: post #37

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet, but the photo of Gretchen referenced as a "candid shot" at the very start of the article (and shown on right a bit lower down) is anything but. There's at least 5 (!) different kinds of branded 'Hills Bros' merch filling the shot. It's hugely obvious that it's an ad. Weird leading example for an article included "Do you know it when you see it?" in the title.

Oh it is obvious - in this specific case - but the main issue is that the line between original content and advertisements is blurred. I noticed the same on Facebook - if it's not actual ads, it's my FB friends raving about a movie, a game, a destination (think Disneyworld), a thing they got, etc - so basically most content is ads.

The They Live sunglasses should be an extension that can abstract these things to keywords like "CONSUME" for product promotion and "MARRY & REPRODUCE" for relationship updates / family pictures.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#84

Post by Xelbair »

Clearly not, because i do not use social media, and i see no point in instagram either - because those platforms offer nothing of value to my life - other than being a platform for harvesting tons of personal data, so they can sell targeted ads towards you.

On a side note, plaintext site is a pleasure to read, and loads lightning fast - i really recommend it.

Influencers are basically a walking, breathing marketing platforms, that seem more down to earth or intimate than typical ads - basically a human version of targeted advertisement mixed with surreptitious advertising.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#86

Post by noxToken »

ignoramous wrote: post #18

It is getting increasingly difficult to guage what's native advertisment and what's not. It is not just social media or e-commerce websites but the enthusiast blogs, review sites, and YouTube channels doing sutble paid pieces. The erstwhile online forums driven by volunteers and like-minded individuals are the only last known place remaining that don't seem to have hidden agendas. And I dread their demise. The eterna…

>It is getting increasingly difficult to guage what's native advertisment and what's not. It is not just social media or e-commerce websites but the enthusiast blogs, review sites, and YouTube channels doing sutble paid pieces.

It's getting even tougher to find reviews of uncommon products. I had a family member ask me suggestions for a car DVD player. I got a fair amount of hits for different brands and players, but when I looked for reviews on these products outside of commerce sites, they were all lists with affiliate links with little blurbs likes, "10 in screens, 6 hours of battery life, headphone jack, and plays media via USB." Gee, thanks for the product description.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#87

Post by Thinkx220 »

tty2300 wrote: post #40
Aromasin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Unfortunately, as useful as it used to be I tend to not use Search Engines at all anymore. I've had to return to the days of old where SE's didn't exist in any useful capacity, and bookmark everything of value. It's filtered out all of the crap I used to have to wade through though. My only regret is that I don't see much outside of the regular websites I visit anymore, but Google was becoming less of a usefu…

One interesting thing I have seen is when I search for a product review, google suggests I add "reddit" to the end of my search. And this conststantly gives me better results but its not long until reddit is completely full of shills which it partly already is.

That's interesting because I frequently add Reddit to the end of my searches. Particularly when it's a niche topic and increasingly for regular topics. Apparently a lot of other people who are fed up with search engines had the same idea. It's a very unfortunate development but nowadays Google search is almost unusable for some topics.

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#89

Post by mc32 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #32
moksly wrote: post #20

I’m not on Instagram, but I don’t think this issue is really confined to social media. I’ve become quite concerned about is how advertising is drowning out useful information everywhere else as well. We recently had a baby girl, our first, and this has lead to quite a lot of internet searching. I’ve been completely unable to find anything resembling an authentic answer on google. It’s all commercial content trying to…

Same situation, we just had our first child, and the amount of ads and branding we were (and are) exposed to now is just staggering. We've been given a bunch of "helpful" boxes that contained some content-marketing bullshit booklets for parents + samples of commercial care products + a lot of ads for said products. Hell, even the health book for our child that we were given has several full-page ads of baby care prod…

Do you think mainstream search engines someday will provide a “commercial search” and “non-commercial search” buttons side-by-side? SEO/ad gamed and non SEO/ad-gamed?

I dream of the day, but unless the government makes it a requirement I don’t see them doing it as it could undermine their business model to some extent (although I think people who want to buy will make use of the “commercial search”)

Re: Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it?

#90

Post by dmurray »

thundergolfer wrote: post #37

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet, but the photo of Gretchen referenced as a "candid shot" at the very start of the article (and shown on right a bit lower down) is anything but. There's at least 5 (!) different kinds of branded 'Hills Bros' merch filling the shot. It's hugely obvious that it's an ad. Weird leading example for an article included "Do you know it when you see it?" in the title.

However, it is missing the disclaimers that the article says this influencer insists on using

> Van Ness's posts are clearly labeled as ads, with the caption #advertisement or #sponsoredcontent [...] Altman is diligent about using those hashtags.

It wouldn't be too hard for the FTC to crack down on sponsored content that isn't tagged as sponsored. Of course they don't have the budget to go after everyone, but they can fine one big player and make a heavy handed example of a handful of small ones (who won't actually get hurt, the free publicity will be worth it to them). The cost of compliance is cheap, so everyone will make sure to display the "sponsored content" sign.

That, like the article, misses the point, however: like placebo drugs, ads work just fine even if you know they are ads.

Post reply on HN