Designer Michael Kors is the first of the advertisers to run the gauntlet as Instagram debuts ads this week. The whole thing started off like this – Facebook-owned owned Instagram thinks ‘Hmm, people come here to stare at pretty pictures right? Bet they wouldn’t mind looking at advertisements if they were disguised as pretty pictures.’
Well, it turns out that the general disdain for everything marketers try to push in our faces runs deep. Ever since the Michael Kors ad started appearing in users’ Instagram feeds, it’s been attracting a lot of negative comments. The last mentioned are generally along the lines of complaints on the introduction of advertisements and not exactly about Kors.
But it would be unfair to claim that the reaction has been totally negative. The ad showing a gold watch studded with precious stones and nestled among macaroons, has won over 2,24,000 hearts. The heart-shaped icon on Instagram is the equivalent of a ‘like’ on Facebook. When users like a post, they show it by clicking on the heart.
The advertisement doesn’t say anything. It’s just a picture captioned ‘Pampered in Paris #MKTimeless.’ Since beautiful photos are what users would associate most strongly with the image/video-sharing social network, it wouldn’t look out of place in people’s streams. But then what happens when videos and images that are clearly ads start popping up uninvited?
Don’t like advertisements? Here’s how you can hide them from your feed:
– Firstly, ads are marked with an arrow at the center of a blue star-like shape
– Tapping on the 3 dots at the bottom right corner of the sponsored posts will let you hide them
– You can also give Instagram a piece of your mind through this option
You should eventually find advertisements you’re actually interested in surfacing in your feed this way. Well, Tumblr gets away with such ads, so why shouldn’t Instagram?