
Instagram Advertising: Do you know it when you see it? - hhs
https://www.npr.org/2019/06/24/734747462/instagram-advertising-do-you-know-it-when-you-see-it
======
moksly
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 push
products rather than give any form of useful information. The government
sites, to their credit, work really well, but what happened to the actual
people on the internet? People sharing their stories without getting paid to
push a product?

In the end we ended up subscribing to a national NGO that does consumer
testing and has an excellent decade long track record, but what good is the
internet if you can’t find honest information?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Try [https://millionshort.com](https://millionshort.com)

Search without the top 1m (or 100k) sites. Far from perfect, but it tunes out
an awful lot of the commerce that Google prioritise. You start finding the old
school forums and info sites that are mostly invisible to Google.

~~~
rchaud
I try to use this as much as I can, especially if I'm looking for content from
"real people" sites, i.e. blogs set up by individuals to share their thoughts.

Those are a breath of fresh air in this day and age, when 90% of blogs
appearing on search are SEO-optimized solopreneur websites that hit you with
cookie warnings and "free ebook" email lead gen popups the second you arrive
on the page.

------
minikomi
This is really disturbing. It made me rethink who I'm following.. I'm going to
go through my feed, with a good cup of Hill Brothers cappachino mix (my
favourite is the classic!) and really look hard at who's worth keeping in my
followed list.

~~~
Theodores
You forgot to post your affiliate link for Hill Brothers!

I jest but isn't that drink something:

Sugar, Nondairy Creamer (Partially Hydrogenated Coconut Oil and Soybean Oil,
Corn Syrup Solids, Sodium Caseinate (a Milk Derivative), Dipotassium
Phosphate, Sugar, Mono and Diglycerides, Silicon Dioxide, Sodium Stearoyl
Lactylate, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Color, Artificial Flavor), Nonfat Dry
Milk, Instant Coffee, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Cocoa Powder (Processed
with Alkali), Silicon Dioxide and Sodium Aluminosilicate (to Prevent Caking),
Carboxymethylcellulose, Salt.

How do we get sold into buying this stuff? Instagram? Inadvertent product
placement on HN?

Seems that the product is cheaper than take out Starbucks, so it is a deal.
But is it?

I drink tea (I am British) and my preference is for the cheap stuff. So that
means the 40 Fair Trade bags for 50p from one store or 80 non-Fair-Trade bags
for 58p ($1) from the other store. No milk, no sugar and certainly no
Dipotassium Phosphate needed.

$4.99 for 15 cups? That is 33 cents per go. I am sure I could get hooked to
it. To cost myself $2.50 a day or approximately $17 dollars a week more than
my current beverage costs (ignoring electricity). That is getting on for $900
a year for getting Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate and the like into my arteries!

But, the Hill Brothers delicacy is still a bargain compared to one Starbucks
treat a day.

~~~
buboard
> 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.

~~~
Theodores
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](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 their brands at train stations and it all seems cool
and locally British. But what is not so obvious is that the other coffee place
at the station that seems not connected to the chain is also selling the same
product with Italian branded beans. So the apparent choice is lining the same
pockets of the global mega corp.

Obviously there is choice but sometimes the choice seems imagined, the
megacorp can monopolise a locality such as a station.

Coffee is a product for grown ups but when you look at the MZB portfolio it
seems that only in America do they treat their customers to a dumbed-down,
sugared-up childish product with garish packaging. This is not just this mega-
corp, if you go into a British supermarket and find a special shelf area with
American products you will see some true crimes when it comes to ultrabright
and childish packaging. Sometimes the cereal boxes have to have stickers over
some of the nutrition claims on the pack as Trading Standards would just have
those products off the shelves immediately if they weren't sanitised that bit.

The mega corp will sell the ultra adulterated products for the US market and
have another brand to cater for the hipsters that want heritage, eco-whatever,
taste and what not.

I think I really will be sticking with plain tea or skipping the intermediate
steps and just going for sugar coated crack cocaine. It is all pulling the
same levers in the brain.

~~~
buboard
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.

------
puranjay
Slightly OT, but I deleted my Facebook last year. Ever since, the Instagram
ads I see are woefully targeted. I'm a 30 year old man living in New Delhi,
India, yet in the past few weeks, I've seen ads for:

\- A real estate company in Denver, Colarado

\- Sanitary pads for women

\- A Dubai property brokerage

\- BMW Las Vegas

I really don't know what's going on with these ads because geographic and
gender exclusion would be the first step in any targeting

~~~
jasoncartwright
Same here. Instagram is absolutely convinced I'm in Norway and no matter where
I actually am (UK, Asia, Africa, USA) it only ever shows me ads in
Norwegian... which I don't speak.

~~~
puranjay
The ads in my wife's feed, who still has her Facebook account, on the other
hand, are very well targeted.

This makes me think that maybe Instagram depends heavily on your Facebook data
for targeting, and that deleting your Facebook (not disabling; deleting)
actually does delete your data from Facebook

~~~
propogandist
On facebook you explicitly provide them information on things like gender,
language and basic demographics that advertisers use for targeting. On IG they
may need to infer this information from your online activities if your FB is
closed.

That said, I don't see this being a data gap for too long.

~~~
puranjay
I just assumed that Facebook would still use my Facebook data it had already
stored before I deleted my account.

------
thundergolfer
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.

~~~
Cthulhu_
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.

------
saagarjha
I’m not on Instagram, but that post was quite obviously sponsored: nobody has
that much _coffee_ merchandise or talks about things they like as was done
there. I’m more concerned about people who have a small but not unreasonable
bias in a certain direction swaying people than sponsored Instagram posts.

------
ignoramous
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 eternal october [0][1] of advertising is here. The only way I have managed
to escape is firewalling them out of my home network, but that's like
isolating myself in a cocoon and leaves a large part of today's internet
inaccessible.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September)

[1] [https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-
sel...](https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-self-
service.html)

~~~
noxToken
>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.

------
jetrink
I'm really surprised that someone with only 6000 followers can command such
high rates. I know from listening to podcasters that they make around $20-30
per 1000 listeners per ad. She's earning between $50 and $130 per thousand
(potential) impressions.

(I thought these might be multi-ad deals, but from scanning her page, I only
see each product featured once.)

------
yakshaving_jgt
Instagram/Facebook have some of the most sophisticated advertising technology
in human history. They know my location history, they can determine the
language I post in, and they surely have countless other data points they can
use for advanced targeting.

And yet, Instagram is adamant that I speak Serbian and that I am in Serbia. I
don't speak Serbian, and I haven't been in Serbia since I stayed in Belgrade
for the month of June last year.

Good job folks.

~~~
jasoncartwright
I have the same for Norway & Norwegian, since I visited there for 3 days last
summer. Instagram has access to the location on my phone and knows where I am
down to the metre.

Absolutely bizarre.

------
jobigoud
Oh, a website where I can decline tracking cookies and the punition is a plain
text article? Yes please! I hope this practice spreads.

~~~
tty2300
Declining tracking cookies is a requirement of the gdpr

~~~
nfoz
how about they just don't give them in the first place

------
Double_a_92
My rule for Instagram is to not follow "beautiful" people that I don't know in
real life.

~~~
theshrike79
I only follow beautiful people who I don't know.

I'm definitely NOT the target demographic for fit teas, gym bands, detox
treatments, bikinis or sports drinks. The pictures accompanying said products
are nice to look at though.

------
mrhappyunhappy
Goes way beyond that. Ton of advertising on here, Facebook groups are probably
95% ads, half or more of the Reddit subs are ads. People who do not work in
the advertising industry sometimes have no idea when they are being sold to.
These people are not dumb either, they are engineers, doctors, lawyers, you
name it, but all are equally prone to psychological manipulation. The
Instagram article is mild in comparison to some of the other market research
and sales strategies out there. Paid content advertising can be so well done
that most readers won’t have a clue they are being taken advantage of. Some
will even go to lengths to defend the advertiser saying that the ad was
relevant to them.

------
tictoc
I just assume everything is an advertisement. If one wants actual information,
dig for it.

------
buboard
I was thinking of making a stock-photo site based on product placement.
Instead of tricking people to buy subscriptions for downloading one image,
give the image for free or very cheap with some product featured
"accidentally" .

------
romanovcode
I can see advertisment very clearly on Instagram. The product is always
conveniently placed in a way so you can clearly see it on photo.

The coffee photo in the article is a complete overkill, one must be an idiot
to not realise it's an advertisment.

------
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.

------
_nalply
About advertising in general: we know it is sort of a prisoner's dilemma.

If only nobody did advertising... Only trustworthy and non-promoting
information about products findable by search (pull instead of push)... It
would also be a lot cheaper for the companies.

~~~
TeMPOraL
It's true. And the one good solution to prisoner's dilemma is to have an
external actor that precommits to punish defectors. In real-life scenarios,
this external actor is very often the government.

That's why I believe that advertising industry ultimately needs to be burned
down to the ground through legal means. It'll be better off for everyone -
including companies, who will be able to spend much less on the little
informative advertising that would be allowed.

------
skocznymroczny
Wait. I am confused. Are the types of posts like in the article considered
"stealth advertising" now? Do you people regularly buy a product because
someone you follow on instagram uses it?

------
driverdan
Whenever someone mentions a brand on social media you should assume it's an
ad. At that point you should unfollow them. There are millions of others you
can follow who aren't shills.

------
malingo
I'm in the ultra minority, but I use
[https://instagram.com](https://instagram.com) on my phone and I've never seen
an ad.

~~~
o10449366
I have never seen an Instagram ad on my phone using both the Android and iOS
apps. I don't know why, but there are certain accounts that have ads disabled
(I'm not the only one [0]). I guess I just got lucky. My alternate accounts
all get ads like normal. I don't think I would use Instagram if I got ads like
my friends do.

[0] [https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-
free...](https://www.fastcompany.com/90166955/i-have-a-secret-ad-free-
instagram-account-and-its-bliss)

~~~
malingo
That's incredible; I'll consider myself lucky and keep enjoying it for now.

Edit: I had assumed the trick was using the mobile website, since I _used to_
see ads when I used the Android app.

------
bluntfang
The real question is Does it matter if you know when you see it or not?
Marketing has the ability to effect your decision making, whether you know its
marketing or not.

------
finnthehuman
Yeah, I know it. It’s called going on Instagram.

To be fair, the instagram accounts of people you know IRL aren’t ads.
Probably.

------
schneby
1 in every 5 posts on IG are advertisements. Go check for yourself.

------
albertgoeswoof
It would not be difficult for FB to add a “Ad” type for posts and be strict
about enforcing this.

But they won’t do that because it will expose the platform for what it really
is.

~~~
antpls
It is actually quite difficult to enforce. You would need to have access to
bank accounts of people to make sure they didn't received money for their
stories. And even then, there are other forms of benefits, such as free
passes, free products, etc ("gift") which leave no trace

~~~
AmericanChopper
If Kim Kardashian gets paid to post a photo wearing a brand, is that an ad?
What if she just gets paid to wear a brand for the day, and it happens to make
it onto Instagram? And why stop there? If a TV show or Movie has some product
placement in it, should a ‘sponsored content’ subtitle be displayed every time
the product appears?

Trying to protect people from content is an endless rabbit hole of ineffective
strategies that usually end up doing more harm than good. Why not just leave
it up to people to take some personal responsibility for how they consume
instagram content?

~~~
tty2300
Make it a legal requirement to mark paid promotions and anyone found to be
doing paid promotions without marking it is at risk of huge fines.

I recall that in the UK, TV programs are already required to do this.

~~~
pjc50
The ASA rules also apply to instagram, but enforcement is necessarily sparse:
[https://www.asa.org.uk/news/new-guidance-launched-for-
social...](https://www.asa.org.uk/news/new-guidance-launched-for-social-
influencers.html)

------
bbmario
I miss forums. vBulletin, Invision, phpBB.

------
graphememes
no but it's damn good and it makes me very angry

edit: oh this isn't about their targeting ads which are very very on point and
are what actually make me upset, about how good it is

~~~
techaeon
I've also noticed that. Their targeted advertising is much more relevant to me
than any other platform I've been on and it's kinda infuriating.

