Mindlessly scrolling through Instagram could soon grow to be so much tougher, as Meta is reportedly testing unskippable ads within the social media app’s feed.
TechCrunch Reports Some users are already seeing the ads, but while you scroll down the page you come across something the positioning calls an “ad break” which blocks scrolling and forces the user to look at an ad that lasts for a couple of seconds.
Non-skippable ads are commonplace on YouTube, but that is the primary time they have been added to a scrolling social media channel. (Instagram has had ads in its Reels section for some time, but those are still skippable. The latest ads are a part of the user’s foremost feed.)
Users who click on the data icon next to ads will see the message “You’re about to see an ad break. Ad breaks are a new way to view ads on Instagram. Sometimes you need to watch an ad before you can continue browsing.”
The response of users who encountered the ads was, as expected, negative.
“I hate this new ‘feature’ so much – it’s so intrusive and seems like a terrible business decision,” wrote a user on Reddit. “The whole platform is already basically made up of ‘soft ads’ that generate revenue by getting people to stay there for long periods of time and consume content without thinking too much about it. And now they’re forcing users to stop scrolling and making it clear that they’re on an app designed to sell them things. So far, I just close the app as soon as an ad break appears, and if this continues, I’ll cancel my subscription.”
Instagram is hardly suffering financially. In April Court records showed that the meta department already makes more cash from promoting than YouTube. In 2020, the documents showed, Instagram generated $22 billion in promoting revenue, while YouTube earned $19.7 billion. In 2019, Instagram earned $17.9 billion. YouTube earned $15.1 billion.
However, Instagram accounts for a couple of third of Meta’s revenue, which may very well be one reason why the corporate is attempting to increase that revenue.
