I thought maybe it was just me and because I use the service so much, I was seeing advertisements more often. So I asked folks on Twitter if Instagram is showing too many ads, and 68 percent of the 704 respondents said yes. When I asked if the ad quality has gone down drastically, 68 percent of the 412 votes said yes. Now, I know these polls aren’t very scientific and come full of cognitive biases, but they give a directional idea of what people think about Instagram ads. And the chances are that things are going to get worse.
I check Instagram almost every day, and for reasons that I don’t understand, I have never seen an ad. Not one. But yet more and more I see other people complaining about the ads on Instagram.
I don’t see Instagram ads. I also don’t see Twitter ads. I also didn’t see Facebook ads (back when I had a Facebook account (2014-ish).
There’s one common theme between Instagram & Twitter. I follow ZERO people. I have a bio, I have an email verified and I have a URL as well as a profile picture. I’m active, I use hashtags but I don’t reply to people or use any DM / PM / Private messaging. Because of who I don’t follow, I don’t see any Ads.
When I used Facebook, the reason I never saw ads? My profile was completely blank. I had no bio, photo, age, location, high school, occupation and I didn’t like any pages. Liking a page accomplishes nothing because even if you like a local craft brewery to know when they put new beers on tap, the problem with Facebook is that you have to interact with their status updates or their updates stop showing on your News Feed. Facebook’s algorithm doesn’t allow you to passively know what your favorite brands, places, businesses are up to unless you interact. Because of this, I saw zero value in liking anything on Facebook. I’m not going to like every update from a local business just so I can see their lunch specials in my feed automatically.
When you combine all of the ways I used Facebook, the result was I never saw a single advertisement.
The way I’ve lived my life in 2014 and 2015 has contributed to an online experience where I see zero advertisements….ever. Sure, I still don’t know who won the Super Bowl, I don’t know what’s going on politically, I don’t know what the latest memes are and when Heather mentioned to me that Kanye had a new album, this was news to me BUT the advantage is that I opt-in to everything I learn. If I want to know about a subject, I search for it. The things I link to here are found through my RSS reader where I subscribe to blogs that focus on specific topics.
It may sounds like I’m out of touch but my life is great.
Back to Instagram Ads, I don’t follow anyone because I don’t want to follow anyone and the result is, I don’t see any advertisements. Instagram knows too little about me to serve up ads.