iStockphoto / bigtunaonline
It is extremely common for social media networks to adopt popular features from other networks. Case in point, how every network has adopted the ability to ‘like’ and ‘react’ to posts after Facebook pioneered that feature.
What isn’t so common is for a network like Instagram with its 2.4 billion global users to see a universally reviled feature like unskippable ads on YouTube and Snapchat and then add to that feature, risking the ire of billions of users. But that’s exactly what is happening and some users are threatning to quit Instagram after the new feature was announced.
The new Instagram feature being tested is unskippable ads between Stories. It has shown up in the wild looking like this for some users:
Testing of this new Instagram feature was confirmed to The Verge by Instagram spokesman Matthew Tye. It is rolling out as ‘ad breaks’ that are unskippable between Stories and in-feed posts, forcing users to sit and watch an ad break before they can move on to the next post.
This is, by far, the most hated feature on YouTube and it’s not even close. The same goes for Snapchat. But it’s definitely true that it earns those networks a TON of money by requiring users to sit and watch the ad before moving onto the next piece of content.
In a popular Reddit thread from four days ago, users sounded off on this new Instagram feature with some threatening to leave the service forever. One person in that thread wrote “They’re shooting themselves in the foot, endless scrolling is one of the most addictive parts of social media…”
Another commented “Guess I’ll just close the app each time I get one of these.” Someone else chimed in with “Time to move to X. Anyhow most of my IG feed is copied from X.” I cannot imagine seeing good content on X these days that compares in any way to Instagram. Someone else in the thread wrote “On the bright side, I’ve been looking for a reason to shut my instagram down. I guess we’ll see.”
Over on X, in the comments, someone replied “This promotion of adds in streaming and social media is starting to get absolutely ridiculous.” To that I’d say, the ad experience on X has become insufferable. Over 90% of the ads I see are from fringe political outfits or knockoff product scammers. And Elon is shoving more ads down people’s throats than ever before.
It is true that on Instagram you’ll often see back-to-back ads when scrolling through Stories but they ads themselves aren’t bad and I’ve purchased products more than once after being served ads there. But when it becomes an unskippable ad and as a user I’m being forced to watch, I immediately create a negative association with whatever is causing that to happen which in this instance would be both Instagram and the advertiser.
It remains to be seen if this feature will be rolled out to everyone on Instagram but this test is almost assured to produce lucrative results so it certainly feels like it will be a widespread new Instagram feature in the very near future.