Honestly, as a consumer, Instagram is the best advertising experience I've ever had. It's scarily good. I find sales from e.g. Cole Hann, Brooks Brothers, Piloti, etc all the time. It's quite possibly the only platform where I would say I bought an item specifically because I saw it an ad.
I had to help deal with a scam on a very low profile product (less than 20$ worth) that will just never arrive, the company just vanished away and she was left to deal with her bank to convince for a chargeback. I thought it was just back luck, but I got to look at her timeline later on, and half of the ads could have been same level scams.
But I have to say that I am disciplined about training the algorithm. I never click on content outside those interests (even if it looks interesting to me). And I occasionally go to the “discover” tab and click only the images that align with those interests.
And there are so many ads now. It feels like 25-33% of my feed, which is absurd. Every set of stories has an ad between them.
That’s a little sad isn’t it? We’re too scared to click on content that looks interesting in case it angers the algorithm :-)
I personally only use IG to follow my fellow figure skaters, but I do use YouTube like GP does: Curating, heavily, and clicking only with purpose.
I'm rewarded with superb recommendations. A seemingly endless treasure trove of high quality content. Educational content, as that's the main stuff I'm interested in.
I see youtube's algorithm as a tool: I learned how to use it to my own benefit. On paper it should "do its own thing", but AI isn't there yet and I don't know that I want it to be. What I know is that doing things this way has allowed youtube to have a profoundly positive impact on my life. In exchange, I bought youtube premium. So, win win.
I believe it's published somewhere that both Facebook and Instagram insert an ad for every 3 news feed items or so.
¹ S̶o̶c̶i̶a̶l̶ Ads network.
Yes, there’s a few misses, but it’s way better than the absolute scum-sucking garbage I see elsewhere on the internet from other ad networks. “Doctor shares one weird trick for emptying your bowels every morning”, “Alan Greenspan tells you what to buy instead of Litecoin”, and similar.
However, I don’t really use Instagram to connect with people I know. I follow a bunch of accounts related to my hobbies and interests. That probably primes the ad-targeting pump a lot better than if I was just following my friends and family on there.