I've always taken pride, like I think most tech nerds of being "ad resistant."
However I've probably bought more stuff as a direct result of ad exposure on Instagram (3 things in three years) than in the entirety of the 25 years I've been on the internet.
Could you specifically describe the ads and the products involved ? I am very curious and would love to have a sense of what they succeeded with (for you).
I have been of the mind that targeted ads are terrible and that ad firms and ad-tech firms and (that entire ecosystem) are fleecing the ad buyers who will eventually wake up to that fact...
It's 2019 and if I search for "volkswagen emissions scandal" I will get banner ads for new volkswagen cars. For a week.
Or, I would, if ublock origin was disabled ...
I can only assume cause I've posted stuff about me cooking and have searched knife sharpening in the past. Not that hard to target really.
Ironically, the latter is a product that helps with decent retargeting, and one reason I purchased it, because it seemed to have worked on me.
I suspect the cuff one had a similar setup. I saw it once, abandoned a cart with it, and then maybe 30% of all ads I saw afterwards were the product.
Just as I'm realizing that it is something I'm quite interested in and want to click it for more information, the next page loads and I've lost the ad.
It's quite annoying.
In my case, I'm interested in climbing, and because brands actually post interesting content, I'll follow them. Do this over a few categories of interests and it may result in Instagram having a better understanding of my interests/things I'll care about.
The ads themselves are usually very high quality images or video, and despite taking up the entire screen like any other post, they don't feel intrusive.
Whatever they're doing is the right way to do it.
Instagram is all ads.
It's a platform where they get users to advertise to each other.