
Instagram grows to 1M active advertisers - sloanesturz
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/instagram-grows-to-1m-active-advertisers-plans-to-add-more-data-and-direct-booking/
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speg
Instagram has become my favourite platform. Every time I log into Facebook all
I see is a wall of poor quality shared posts ranging from random truck videos
to fake news.

The relative quiet on Instagram, knowing I'm going to be getting only photos
is serene.

~~~
aphextron
Same. I use Facebook for nothing but messaging now, and have every other
feature blocked with my adblocker.

~~~
doughj3
You can use messenger directly at
[https://www.messenger.com/](https://www.messenger.com/)

~~~
vit05
Is there a tinfoil to just use Messenger?

~~~
thex10
I'm not sure what you mean, but it's now possible to deactivate your FB
account and continue to use Messenger.

~~~
vit05
Sorry, I was asking if there is something similar to Tinfoil for Facebook,
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.danvelazco.fbwrapper&hl=en)
, but just for Messenger.

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prdonahue
Has anyone noticed a huge influx of ads when using Instagram? Admittedly I'm
an infrequent user but as I use Facebook less I find that time being spent on
IG.

One technique that has worked for me to reduce the number of ads I see is to
report every single one as "I find this offensive". Do that enough times and
you won't see an ad for a long time.

~~~
arvidj
I wonder if they have some system in place to notice and counter-act this.

~~~
prdonahue
Perhaps, but in today's world if you tell a company you find something
offensive they're likely to listen (for fear of PR fallout). Admittedly, I
find all ads offensive (to my time) so it's disingenuous but it works—for
now—so I'll keep doing it.

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slackoverflower
Instagram is awesome. I wish Facebook did not own them and Instagram stayed
independent like Snapchat.

~~~
acchow
What would be different if Instagram was independent?

~~~
tcdent
Facebook has become a privacy nightmare and has numerous concerns w/r/t
ownership and management. Their role is the only reason I have any hesitation
using Instagram, though I do fully embrace the platform anyway.

~~~
dbbk
Can you articulate what it is about Facebook that is a 'privacy nightmare'?

~~~
oculusthrift
not sure what the poster was talking about but the advertising became creepily
targeted

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stedaniels
I used to love Instagram, but since I tried to register an account for a new
business (which it blocked before I could even sign in, thus consigning the
username into oblivion) I haven't been able to log back into my personal
account. It keeps sending me through a verify phase because of suspicious
activity on my account. This leads to my successfully verifying, and then
ending up at a 500 server error page, or a bad request 400 error page.[0]
Attempts to search for this on the Instagram help page.. oh my gosh, I get as
far as typing two characters into the search box and it locks me out saying
I'm too fast. [1] (the search box is search as you type.) I try and report
that as an error using an included link on that page, and low and behold that
page is also having problems. [2]

It's a bit of a cluster... in my experience.

I really want to get back into my Instagram account!

I'm missing out getting advertised too, and I'm missing out advertising to
others, it's pretty much a double whammy!

P.S. I'd love to prove I'm not a dirty spammer and get into the new business
account too, but all attempts to fill out that form with the relevant evidence
on Facebook/Instagram has been ignored.

[0] [http://imgur.com/UMp6TTV](http://imgur.com/UMp6TTV) [1]
[http://imgur.com/bbQtPPL](http://imgur.com/bbQtPPL) [2]
[http://imgur.com/BTgNLAY](http://imgur.com/BTgNLAY)

~~~
dilemma
Oh, I had something similar happen. I had 3 (legitimate) accounts banned at
the same time, for no reason. When I went through the verification process,
the upload button wouldn't work, and the contact link would give a 400. Some
weeks later it started working, but basically it's a clusterf __*k. It 's a
clear example of a dumb system, caused by artificial stupidity (AI in
practice) and poor organisation.

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oculusthrift
Instagram has a real ad quality problem. I routinely get ads like "99 percent
off Yeezy's!!!!!" This links to clear scam websites.

~~~
tcdent
In my experience, ads are targeted based on your social graph. I routinely see
ads relevant to my lifestyle or occupation, never those for spammy products or
trashy memes.

~~~
oculusthrift
not sure about that. if anything its most likely location because this summer
when i was in silicon valley i got ads for jobs. however on my college campus
its these trashy ones.

~~~
marak830
I'm getting location based too. Which is always interesting as the ads are in
Japanese, so I can't even read them.

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raulk
Whenever you create an ad on FB, it is also placed on Instagram by default. I
wonder how many out of that 1M were people who didn't disable the default.

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andrewpbrett
Has anyone else had the experience of seeing almost zero ads on Instagram
since they introduced them? I can count the number I've seen on one hand. I
marked the first couple, right after they launched them, as not relevant (they
weren't) and since then I think I've seen two, one in the feed and one in
their Stories feature.

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daenney
There's actually an interesting comment on the article itself:

> Kind of misleading...when you start advertising on Facebook it automatically
> opts you in to advertising on Instagram.

I don't know if this is true or not but that could certainly explain how their
advertiser numbers ballooned like that.

~~~
bobwaycott
It is true. Every ad, promotion, or boosted post defaults to placement in news
feeds on FB desktop and mobile, and Instagram.

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federicoponzi
It's funny because when you want to buy ads on facebook, you spend something
like 80% of budget on facebook and the remaining 20% on instagram by default

~~~
siquick
There is a clear option to define the placement of the ad, and turning off
Instagram is the first option you see.

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michaelbuckbee
There is a real power in the default options though - and when the FB ads
first started allowing IG as a placement it wasn't the case.

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georgiecasey
i agree, loads of casual FB advertisers surely just leave on Instagram

the power of the Adwords and FB Ads customer base is sometimes overlooked I
find. if Instagram stayed independent and had to build their own ad-customer
base, would they have been as successful?

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astannard
Instagram was cool, now it's going downhill in my opinion due to many spam
accounts. Here is my highly opinionated piece on it:

[https://medium.com/@AndyStannard/an-open-letter-to-
instagram...](https://medium.com/@AndyStannard/an-open-letter-to-
instagram-c59258073563#.bfazod73g)

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rednerrus
The advertisements on IG are pretty good. I find that I want to buy about 40%
of the products they advertise to me. That's as good as I've seen in 20 years
of web browsing.

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taytus
Full Disclosure: I'm the developer of statimgram.com

I believe Instagram will continue to keep growing, and I wanted to help
advertisers and users to have more tools to engage and reach their followers.

Now with statimgram, you can schedule and post from the browser not only
regular posts, but also directly into IG stories.

We are launching next week, and I'm opening the API to developers as well, if
you want early access please message me.

~~~
slackoverflower
Does this violate their terms of service? I've heard they do not want desktop
uploading or any form of uploading media through the API. I can't seem to find
an API reference for uploading on api.instagram.com

~~~
taytus
We provide a full "end to end" posting service requiring no intervention from
you after you have scheduled your posts (no push notifications to your phone
and you having to open the Instagram app to post it for example. We don't use
IG's API.

~~~
GrinningFool
> We don't use IG's API.

This suggests that you're either using people, have found an effective
automated method, or have reached agreement with IG.

If the first: how well will that scale with growth? If the second: what
happens when the block this current method, or otherwise block your ability to
do this because it violates some obscure ToS clause?

If the third: congratulations and best of luck!

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taytus
All I can say is that this is indeed an automated method. All that IG receives
is a https call from an Android phone. We can't go on details because this is
our secret sauce (but we are opening our API so other developers can do the
same).

~~~
georgiecasey
is this the secret sauce? [https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-
API](https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-API)

the work the Spanish developer puts into this 3rd party API is crazy and all
the issues are from Indian spammers demanding he fixes it!

~~~
pavel_lishin
This one seems fairly representable, and great:
[https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-
API/issues/1097](https://github.com/mgp25/Instagram-API/issues/1097)

