For several days now, Instagram has been reminding me that “advertising saturation has been detected” and that I need to make an effort to change my ads, presumably to adapt them to the new times.
However, I don’t think I’m going to do it. At least not in the medium term.
For a long time, Instagram has been one of the tools I’ve used not only to promote my work, but also to connect with other photographers and people to photograph.
It was a fine romance, but now it´s over.
A few years ago, I also decided to pay Instagram to increase the visibility of my posts. Not much, firstly because I’m a poor man and secondly because my goals are modest.
At first, around 2022, advertising on Instagram was profitable. The cost per new follower was, in my case, around thirty cents.
If you spent thirty euros a month (which was the maximum I spent), that meant that in a week you could easily gain around a hundred new followers to keep happy.
However, for some time now, those thirty euros have been much less effective because Instagram’s algorithm is no longer able to satisfy all of us who advertise. Added to this is the fact that Instagram’s owner, Meta, has a real financial crater caused by the massive investments involved in launching artificial intelligence, so it has had to look for other forms of financing. The blue check.
Those who pay a monthly fee are promised, among other advantages, that their posts will be more visible. Not only to those who already follow them but, and this is the crux of the matter, to those who do not follow them. We all know that if your posts are not shown to potential followers, it is impossible for the reach of your publications to increase.
Instagram, and social media in general, are at that point in the product cycle where they have become “cash cows” (that’s the technical term). This means that, for their owners, they are sources of funding for other products—in the case of Meta, for example, the Metaverse or, as I said before, artificial intelligence.
We all know, however, what happens when a farmer milks a cow too much and doesn’t feed it. In the end, the cow dies.
And that’s what’s happening with Instagram, and I’ll go back to the beginning: in order to make money, Instagram needs users to pay for advertising. For us to pay for advertising, it has to offer the promise that the reach of our posts will be bigger. The problem is that Instagram is no longer in a position to offer us that at as favorable a cost as before.
Another factor indicating consumer fatigue is that young people are beginning to abandon not only Instagram, but also other social networks.
Here’s why.
In their attempt to get the most milk possible from the cow, the brains behind Instagram decided one day that, instead of seeing photos of our friends or our favorite movie stars, we would start seeing photos of products that we would supposedly be interested in buying.
Instagram thus radically changed its business model and became a teleshopping channel. And what’s more, a teleshopping channel that only sells products of the lowest quality.
What does all this mean for photographers? Well, it’s obvious: Instagram is no longer our primary advertising tool and, without abandoning what can still be exploited from the potential of social media, we have to look for other ways not only to make ourselves known, but also to regain control over our work.
In my opinion, this even means going back to 2010 procedures, such as having our own website.
