Will Instagram Ads Make you Bowlegged?
We’ve all heard the stories, and you might have even experienced it yourself, of seeing an ad online for a product that you were just talking about. It feels like these ads are practically reading your mind, or at the very least, listening to your conversations.
Well, Friday night I was at a dinner party and one of my friends was explaining that she has started receiving ads on instagram with products that correct bowleggedness. Now, my friend is often on stage in front of thousands of people. She is tall, slender, talented, confident, attractive, and without any hint of bowleggedness or the need for a product to correct bowleggedness.
Well, Friday night I was at a dinner party where one of my friends was explaining that she has started receiving ads onInstagram with products that correct bowleggedness. Now, my friend is often on stage in front of thousands of people. She is tall, slender, talented, confident, attractive, and without any hint of bowleggedness or the need for a product to correct bowleggedness.
I asked her if she had been doing research on the topic. Nope.
Had she recently had a conversation with someone about the condition? Nope.
Perhaps she had watched a show or read a book with a character…nope.
But here’s the interesting thing. She had seen the ads so many times, and usually online ads are so well targeted, that she assumed she must actually be bowlegged and not realized it.
So she did exactly what any reasonable, confident, successful, accomplished person would do: immediately worried it might be true. So she took full-length photos of herself and texted them to her sister and best friends to see if she had perhaps developed bowleggedness without realizing it. She took and texted photos to her tribe. Every day. For a week.
See, we have become so conditioned to believe the ads know our innermost thoughts, wants, and needs, that just because she received the ads she believed they must know more about her than she knew about herself.
Recently I decided to upgrade the light switches and plugs in our house to the kind that are Bluetooth-enabled and activated by app or voice command. One member of our household, and I’m not naming names (Michael), often leaves the lights on when he exits a room so I want the ability to turn the lights off without having to get up and do it myself. We have a Saints Streets house that was built long before all of this fancy tech so I had to do lots of research on the topic to find the right ones to work with old wiring. I appreciated the ads and articles that popped up in my feed. All of that extra information was really helpful.
So “big brother” knowing what you are in the market for isn’t always a bad thing. Don’t you want the people that are in need of your products to see your ads? You definitely don’t want to spend money reaching people who aren’t in the market and don’t need your products.
Luckily we have the ability to be very specific and targeted with the desired audience for your ads. As long as you serve up your ads in a helpful way – and not stalker – then it should be all good.
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