Thursday, November 26, 2020

Week 13 Part A

Advertising on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media outlets has always fascinated me. It is almost as if they know exactly what I am looking for, or something I have talked about. I find the ads on Instagram especially to be spot on to the things I am interested in purchasing. I notice they are always pushing products that will give you a direct link to their Instagram page. Once you "save" or click on their Instagram profile it seems more and more similar ads start to pop up. For example, if I am interested in a skin care product for acne all of the sudden there are several ads on my timeline showing me these new innovative acne products that are apparently the best out there. Or they will show me ads showing me a face wash, or a make up brush, or really anything relative to the one image I saved to look at later on.

The imagery used is usually effective, and I have talked to my friends about this as well. I have noticed more and more often my friends are buying products that popped up on their social media pages and I am guilty of this as well. I have many items saved that I will then look up reviews elsewhere and potentially end up making that purchase. I would never know these brands or these items if they did not show up on my feed. They tend to show videos with "real people" using the product, or they show pretty imagery to make the product more attractive to the viewer. 

The ads that annoy me are the ones that come up daily that I scroll by with absolutely no interest. You would think over time those ads would go away and they would curate new ones for my page. I have gotten to the point a few times where I have removed the ad myself and they then ask you why to which I say "I see this too often" they immediately reply with "you will never see this ad again." That has always been accurate, they never showcase the ad after I manually request them not to.

I feel that advertising done on social media is much more effective today than the ads in newspapers and magazines. From what I can remember, ads in magazines are typically luxury brands that no one necessarily reading the magazine can afford. I would see the same ads in magazines that I saw on billboards and although they always look pretty and professional it was unrealistic for most of the people looking at them to afford anything they were trying to sell. Social media ads are targeting the right people and they are prices that are affordable most of the time. Not many people in this generation are picking up a newspaper and looking through them when they can easily find any information they want on their cell phone. 


No comments:

Post a Comment

Week 16

My viewpoint of social media has changed in that I can now see that there may be an opportunity to create a business from it. I have always ...