No one seems to have gotten it yet, but: Instagram.

You want to reach the cool kids, you must advertise on Instagram, and the only serious way to use ig is the app.

s/instagram/snapchat/gc

Not really. Instagram is way more heavily used by college kids as far as I can tell.

Instagram has ads?

Tons of them, in between posts, and they're fairly well targeted.

I manage three accounts and in the main one, I've never seen ads. Can't work out why.

3 samples I just took (which actually made me realize i get a ton of ads cause I didn't scroll very far for this):

https://i.gyazo.com/5d48e7d926ad5e237536c9dfb99d6aa1.png

https://i.gyazo.com/0194219ec43f3ce6e386f9d5b2443bc3.jpg

https://i.gyazo.com/e7904940fab2d6b610cbac5f83d119d8.png

The last one is a gif or video.

You're excluded from the audience?

Yes, users plugging products in their pictures/posts in exchange for money or free samples.

I don't think those are the "ads" people here are talking about. As far as I know Instagram doesn't make any money off of personal endorsements like that.

They offer business accounts: https://business.instagram.com/

Which looks to have at least some useful tools: https://blogs.constantcontact.com/instagram-business-account...

Now I'm not saying every Instagram model getting endorsed for posting about some company's fitness gear has a business account, but I'm also sure that number isn't zero. There's a gray area where if you're making enough money off that type of thing, or are close enough to get there with the right nudge, that it probably makes sense to buy into it even though you're not necessarily running a business.

Essentially, you're paying into being (or becoming) a professional celebrity. My guess is the number of users in that niche isn't trivial.

> Is advertising dead on the desktop?

It could mean that the only thing keeping the ad supported internet alive is the lack of AD blockers on mobile operating systems.

lack of their ubiquitous use you mean? ios added ad blockers and put the ad sector in a tizzy

iOS ad blockers only apply to webkit views. Facebook's app is not effected by ad blockers.

i will never ever install FB app or FB messenger on my cell phone anymore. Firefox with adblock, and if I can't message, well then there is SMS/Viber/Whatsapp/Hangouts/whateva.

Or is desktop traffic dead? :)

I use Facebook a lot to keep up with my family. My usage is probably 99% mobile.

Assuming users are not on both mobile and desktop, then the desktop is around 100 million (DAU less Mobile DAUs):

Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.18 billion on average for September 2016, an increase of 17% year-over-year. Mobile DAUs – Mobile DAUs were 1.09 billion on average for September 2016, an increase of 22% year-over-year.

I don't think that's a very safe assumption.

maybe rephrase to desk top only users is around 100 million.

You don't have good ad blockers on mobile. With native apps ads are easier to show. You can download and cache them in the background.

For web? Firefox + uBlock origin works great on Android for web. Organic SERPs are actually visible.

According to [0], mobile ads are expected to surpass desktop in 2017.

On another note (related to the link I just provided), is it me or is that Google AMP service completely heinous? It seems to hide publisher content behind Google URLs and nearly force publishers to integrate to it to land in top results. Why aren't people pissed about this "takeover"? What am I missing?

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/fortune/2016/06/2...

Amp is amazing. Without amp it's pages full of full screen popovers that take 30 seconds to re see.

Could they have done this without making the underlying full pages/site inaccessible?

I believe it's a result of install-this-app ads being the only format that delivers measurable results.

Nah. You can only thank uncle do-not-evil-till-IPO-Google that they still block browser extensions on mobile. Resulting in no adblockers :-(

As if people would go through the trouble of opening Facebook in a mobile browser instead of just using the app.

I do walk through it, it's painless (1 extra tap on screen) and it's exactly to not have FB apps on cell phone and not have ads displayed. I use FB less, which is good for healthier life. FB long lost its glamour, it's just another RSS news feed about friends/interests.

Same for my fiancee.

More and more people (myself incl) are not using fb app. Reasons:

* all time location tracking

* inability to block ads (firefox allows to block ads on android)

* making it harder to induce compulsive fb usage (its addictive)

* battery usage (this is huge, try it)

Also you don't need to let FB get the entire gamut of permissions possible on the phone.

is this all free-to-play mobile app installs?

if so, worrisome.

Nope. And I, if I was Facebook, would not be proud of this stats. Don't put all your eggs in the same basket. Now, FB and Google has the opposite profit behavior. And I think it will be bad to both of them. Maybe they will meet in the middle, and lose their cash cow.

> Don't put all your eggs in the same basket.

This is a strange complaint. A couple years ago, Facebook was making 90% of its money on the desktop, and people were saying the same thing. Now they have (very successfully) diversified, and the complaint is still there?

I don't think it counts as diversification if you just move all your eggs to a different basket.

They added videos

If it was a problem, why would it not be now? Only because it is said that the mobile basket is bigger? It may be less deep. Google still makes a lot more than FB.

Desktop revenue is growing too. Just not at the same rate as mobile. They have not ignored their desktop platform, in fact, the ad product is still designed for creating desktop ads, while they offer lots of tips and tools for optimizing them for mobile.