6 ms·

Enjoy insta while it lasts. They are having more and more sponsored posts creep into the feed. I don’t expect this trend to reverse. It’s how they make money.

Zak 7y ago
I'm not actually a big fan of Instagram. Its format restrictions and mobile-only upload may be contributing to it having more interesting content for the moment, but I'm convinced Facebook could achieve a more interesting feed by changing the algorithm as well. I don't mind terribly if there are a few sponsored posts in any of my social media feeds. I suspect the acceptable rate is somewhere around one per five original content posts.
- flanbiscuit 7y ago
  The thing I enjoy most about the sponsored posts is seeing people rip into the product in the comments.
jiggliemon 7y ago
Confirmed. Last time I checked, every 6th post was an ad. Just checked and it’s now every 5th. There’s several large magazines that are 50% ad content. I bet that’s the ceiling.
- gwm83 7y ago
  Just checked mine. Every third post was a sponsored ad. This is why I have mostly stopped going on Instagram.
  - jiggliemon 7y ago
    I see. It’s at least every fifth for me. An there’s some cases where it’s 3 or 4. Depends on what content they’re sandwiching. Second post is always an ad. There’s an ad before they tell you you’re all caught up. And it looks like followed tags effect that ratio as well.
- Phlarp 7y ago
  Adorable that you think they would be satisfied at 50% ad content!
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  For a print publication, maybe. If you go above 50% ads, some print pages will be ads on both sides, and both may easily be ripped out and discarded--the earliest ad-blocker tech.
- spc476 7y ago
  Back in the late 80s and 90s, there was the magazine Computer Shopper that was easily 90%+ advertising. It was incredibly popular.
  - dsr_ 7y ago
    That was because it was the only way people could buy computers that weren't pre-selected by Compaq, Dell or IBM. It was a 100% paid-placement catalog. Pretty quickly I figured out that articles by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols were worth reading and the rest were generally not. But the ads were what we were looking for.
8ytecoder 7y ago
I have mentioned this before here - instagram ads are a bit too creepy. I have had multiple personal ads that were eerily accurate and I hadn’t even discussed these things over any written form. I’m not paranoid to think they are listening to the microphone but the coincidence is super uncanny. It crossed the line for me twice in the past few months alone.
- Zak 7y ago
  I've had the opposite experience with ads on Instagram. It shows me ads for cat products (I don't have a cat), code bootcamps (I have decades of programming experience), and for a while repeatedly showed the same ad for a job as a flight instructor (I have no qualifications for such a job).
- wingkongex 7y ago
  They are all over the place for me. I also get a ton of strange ones that are made to look like regular people just taking pictures of themselves, I guess aspiring models? I don't even engage with IG models...I swear.
- joncrane 7y ago
  For me this only started happening after I offered feedback aka "Don't show me ads like this any more." Of course I realized shortly thereafter: "Do I really want better targeted ads on my Instagram feed?" It's a little too late now but if I had to do it over again I would let it guess, mostly poorly, and that makes it easier to filter out the sponsored content.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - chipperyman573 7y ago
    You can always give it incorrect data to train with :) I've been muting ads from the twitter account of every ad I've seen on twitter and the tweets I get are really, really weird and often more interesting than the tweets it gave me to begin with (because now I'm mostly down to the ads that some random person spent $5 promoting as a joke). But there was a weird 2 month period where twitter was trying to determine what I did want to see and actually had real inventory to play with, and it was hilarious how wrong it would get me sometimes. As far as I can tell, this is the only way to keep your privacy - to confuse the algorithms by overloading them with random data.
okmokmz 7y ago
I don't know how anyone still uses Instagram. It was an amazing app pre-aquisition, and Facebook managed to completely destroy everything that was good about it
- bitreality 7y ago
  You may believe that, and I'm sure it's true to a certain degree, but Instagram has seen absurd growth since the Facebook acquisition. Without Instagram, Facebook would likely be in a crisis right now over its aging userbase and decelerating growth. The Instagram app is probably nearly as valuable as the Facebook app at this point.
  - okmokmz 7y ago
    I'm not arguing that it isn't successful, but Facebook still managed to modify it the point that it lost 100% of its usefulness to me. It was at its best when you could follow accounts, all of the posts of the people you follow would be displayed chronologically, and clicking on a hashtag would also display all posts under that tag chronologically. Facebook removed the chronological order of the timeline, made it so you will not see all posts from the people you follow, started injecting posts and ads from accounts I do not follow, and did the same with hashtags where you will only see posts facebook decides you should see via their algorithm. Also, engagement with my page decreased 100-500% across the board and my consistent growth stopped entirely as I was not an "influencer" so people that followed me and checked my hashtags would rarely even see my posts Facebook changed Instagram from an extremely functional social app that allowed you to easily interact with and become parts of niche communities, to a useless ad platform that limits your interactivity and connectivity to anything that you actually want to see to push you to whoever pays Facebook or whatever the algorithm decides what should be popular which ends up being the same garbage content that has plagued Facebook for years
fapjacks 7y ago
I quit Instagram for a couple of months or so, and came back last week, and now I'm shown one ad every 2-3 posts, no exceptions. It was so overbearing that I started counting, and I did not get a single stretch of more than three posts without an ad thrown in. So I just uninstalled it.
apazzolini 7y ago
If you have a content blocker turned on in iOS, install the PWA version of Instagram - it will remove all sponsored posts. The PWA version is almost as good as the native app. It lacks a pull to refresh feature as far as I can tell, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
- sharatvir 7y ago
  Great suggestion. It’s actually a pretty solid experience. Only other difference is that it does not auto play videos on feed or story. Maybe that’s a feature for some though.
- newscracker 7y ago
  What I would love on iOS would be an isolated container like the Multi-account Containers on Firefox desktop. With a PWA, how are the cookies (and local storage) stored and handled? Do they all live with Safari's cookies? Or do they have their own cookie container that's isolated from the rest of the system? If it were the former, I wouldn't want that. I regularly use Firefox Focus (which is also the system wide content blocker for me), but it doesn't seem like its blocking rules are updated often. Not sure if that's because of some limit in the number of rules allowed per blocking extension.
mountainofdeath 7y ago
Indeed it seems that half the things I see are sponsored posts when just a year or two, they were few and far between. Also, the quality of the content has decreased dramatically.
flycaliguy 7y ago
Somehow I have zero ads on instagram. I don't know how that happened, but I suspect it has to do with a period of time on facebook where I was just marking every ad as not relevant to me. Everytime I visited, I'd let their system know that any type of ad doesn't suit me. So maybe that tricked the system? My only other theory would be that they somehow know I wouldn't use the service at all if it had ads. I'm a fickle user who happens to produce some quality, original artwork for their service.
cwkoss 7y ago
I like replying to sponsored posts with comments that the sponsor would probably not classify as a 'positive engagement' ;-)

Zak 7y ago

I'm not actually a big fan of Instagram. Its format restrictions and mobile-only upload may be contributing to it having more interesting content for the moment, but I'm convinced Facebook could achieve a more interesting feed by changing the algorithm as well. I don't mind terribly if there are a few sponsored posts in any of my social media feeds. I suspect the acceptable rate is somewhere around one per five original content posts.

flanbiscuit 7y ago
The thing I enjoy most about the sponsored posts is seeing people rip into the product in the comments.

jiggliemon 7y ago

Confirmed. Last time I checked, every 6th post was an ad. Just checked and it’s now every 5th. There’s several large magazines that are 50% ad content. I bet that’s the ceiling.

gwm83 7y ago
Just checked mine. Every third post was a sponsored ad. This is why I have mostly stopped going on Instagram.
- jiggliemon 7y ago
  I see. It’s at least every fifth for me. An there’s some cases where it’s 3 or 4. Depends on what content they’re sandwiching. Second post is always an ad. There’s an ad before they tell you you’re all caught up. And it looks like followed tags effect that ratio as well.
Phlarp 7y ago
Adorable that you think they would be satisfied at 50% ad content!
logfromblammo 7y ago
For a print publication, maybe. If you go above 50% ads, some print pages will be ads on both sides, and both may easily be ripped out and discarded--the earliest ad-blocker tech.
spc476 7y ago
Back in the late 80s and 90s, there was the magazine Computer Shopper that was easily 90%+ advertising. It was incredibly popular.
- dsr_ 7y ago
  That was because it was the only way people could buy computers that weren't pre-selected by Compaq, Dell or IBM. It was a 100% paid-placement catalog. Pretty quickly I figured out that articles by Steven J Vaughan-Nichols were worth reading and the rest were generally not. But the ads were what we were looking for.

8ytecoder 7y ago

I have mentioned this before here - instagram ads are a bit too creepy. I have had multiple personal ads that were eerily accurate and I hadn’t even discussed these things over any written form. I’m not paranoid to think they are listening to the microphone but the coincidence is super uncanny. It crossed the line for me twice in the past few months alone.

Zak 7y ago
I've had the opposite experience with ads on Instagram. It shows me ads for cat products (I don't have a cat), code bootcamps (I have decades of programming experience), and for a while repeatedly showed the same ad for a job as a flight instructor (I have no qualifications for such a job).
wingkongex 7y ago
They are all over the place for me. I also get a ton of strange ones that are made to look like regular people just taking pictures of themselves, I guess aspiring models? I don't even engage with IG models...I swear.
joncrane 7y ago
For me this only started happening after I offered feedback aka "Don't show me ads like this any more." Of course I realized shortly thereafter: "Do I really want better targeted ads on my Instagram feed?" It's a little too late now but if I had to do it over again I would let it guess, mostly poorly, and that makes it easier to filter out the sponsored content.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- chipperyman573 7y ago
  You can always give it incorrect data to train with :) I've been muting ads from the twitter account of every ad I've seen on twitter and the tweets I get are really, really weird and often more interesting than the tweets it gave me to begin with (because now I'm mostly down to the ads that some random person spent $5 promoting as a joke). But there was a weird 2 month period where twitter was trying to determine what I did want to see and actually had real inventory to play with, and it was hilarious how wrong it would get me sometimes. As far as I can tell, this is the only way to keep your privacy - to confuse the algorithms by overloading them with random data.

okmokmz 7y ago

I don't know how anyone still uses Instagram. It was an amazing app pre-aquisition, and Facebook managed to completely destroy everything that was good about it

bitreality 7y ago
You may believe that, and I'm sure it's true to a certain degree, but Instagram has seen absurd growth since the Facebook acquisition. Without Instagram, Facebook would likely be in a crisis right now over its aging userbase and decelerating growth. The Instagram app is probably nearly as valuable as the Facebook app at this point.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  I'm not arguing that it isn't successful, but Facebook still managed to modify it the point that it lost 100% of its usefulness to me. It was at its best when you could follow accounts, all of the posts of the people you follow would be displayed chronologically, and clicking on a hashtag would also display all posts under that tag chronologically. Facebook removed the chronological order of the timeline, made it so you will not see all posts from the people you follow, started injecting posts and ads from accounts I do not follow, and did the same with hashtags where you will only see posts facebook decides you should see via their algorithm. Also, engagement with my page decreased 100-500% across the board and my consistent growth stopped entirely as I was not an "influencer" so people that followed me and checked my hashtags would rarely even see my posts Facebook changed Instagram from an extremely functional social app that allowed you to easily interact with and become parts of niche communities, to a useless ad platform that limits your interactivity and connectivity to anything that you actually want to see to push you to whoever pays Facebook or whatever the algorithm decides what should be popular which ends up being the same garbage content that has plagued Facebook for years

fapjacks 7y ago

I quit Instagram for a couple of months or so, and came back last week, and now I'm shown one ad every 2-3 posts, no exceptions. It was so overbearing that I started counting, and I did not get a single stretch of more than three posts without an ad thrown in. So I just uninstalled it.

apazzolini 7y ago

If you have a content blocker turned on in iOS, install the PWA version of Instagram - it will remove all sponsored posts. The PWA version is almost as good as the native app. It lacks a pull to refresh feature as far as I can tell, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

sharatvir 7y ago
Great suggestion. It’s actually a pretty solid experience. Only other difference is that it does not auto play videos on feed or story. Maybe that’s a feature for some though.
newscracker 7y ago
What I would love on iOS would be an isolated container like the Multi-account Containers on Firefox desktop. With a PWA, how are the cookies (and local storage) stored and handled? Do they all live with Safari's cookies? Or do they have their own cookie container that's isolated from the rest of the system? If it were the former, I wouldn't want that. I regularly use Firefox Focus (which is also the system wide content blocker for me), but it doesn't seem like its blocking rules are updated often. Not sure if that's because of some limit in the number of rules allowed per blocking extension.

mountainofdeath 7y ago

Indeed it seems that half the things I see are sponsored posts when just a year or two, they were few and far between. Also, the quality of the content has decreased dramatically.

flycaliguy 7y ago

Somehow I have zero ads on instagram. I don't know how that happened, but I suspect it has to do with a period of time on facebook where I was just marking every ad as not relevant to me. Everytime I visited, I'd let their system know that any type of ad doesn't suit me. So maybe that tricked the system? My only other theory would be that they somehow know I wouldn't use the service at all if it had ads. I'm a fickle user who happens to produce some quality, original artwork for their service.

cwkoss 7y ago

I like replying to sponsored posts with comments that the sponsor would probably not classify as a 'positive engagement' ;-)