Like most people my age, I spend a decent amount of my time scrolling and interacting with others through social media. My platforms of choice are Snapchat and Instagram, in that order. On average, I spend about two hours on Snapchat and an hour on Instagram a day. This time does not take into account the time I have spent on these apps since entering quarantine. From my time within these apps, I have noticed a few trends that seem to be popular among users.
First, younger users tend to find long messages way to inconvenient and become ignored. A rule I learned in MC 2010, the class on news writing, is that 25 words is the max amount of words for a title, any more than that and people become overwhelmed. I used to think that rule could be applied to print advertising. Now I believe the shorter the better.
When I am using social media and happen across an ad, I find that I am more likely to read it and pay attention to it, if the message is short and to the point. I think the max amount of words younger generations will pay attention to is 15. It does not sound like much, and that is because it is not. With technology at our fingertips, we have developed shorter attention spans.
Second, people who use these platforms do not appreciate ads, especially ads that look like ads. It becomes annoying when you are trying to relax, scrolling through your Instagram feed, and you are hit with an obvious ad. It’s frustrating to go from being entertained, to once again having an ad unexpectedly pop up within your feed. Sure, you can scroll past them, but most times being forced to see an advertisement leaves a sour taste in your mouth.
As an interesting way to combat this problem, Instagram has incorporated their ads to look like other content being posted on the cite. It makes distinguishing ads from other content a little harder, but it also makes enjoying the ad a little more fun. For example, when Amazon released its super bowl ad starring Ellen, they released the ad on Instagram. While scrolling through my feed, I noticed it was a video, but it took longer than normal for me to realize that it was an ad. I was not even mad that I watched the ad because it did not ruin my experience like ads usually did on Instagram.
Speaking of ads that ruin an experience, there are two types of ads that can ruin anyone’s day the second they are noticed: ads that you are forced to watch and ads that look very fake.
Youth’s of today are so used to technology and what it can do. We are a smart generation, so when things look fake, we really do not like it. We are not asking for over the top ads with everything but the kitchen sink, we are simply looking for quality. We want things that are pretty to look at, things that inspire us, things that make us want to discuss them for days to come. It becomes really frustrating when it feels like I have to look at an ad that was made by a high school student who had a budget of ten dollars and their iPhone. Even if the ad is simple, it should at least look like it was the creators most important job.
Finally, the most frustrating thing about ads is being forced to sit through ads. In the past, the only platform that made you sit through an ad was YouTube. Now, Snapchat has implemented ads that you cannot skip. To be fair, Snapchat only shows ads when you browse people’s stories and most times you are allowed to skip them. But, every so often there is an ad that you are forced to sit through. Don’t get me wrong, the ads are relatively short, about five seconds, but being forced to sit through any ad is really frustrating. It’s like when you are a kid and you decide to do a chore and, on your way, to do that chore someone tells you to do said chore and now you want to do anything but that chore. Except, you are being forced to watch a very boring ad, and more times than not, you never finish whatever you were watching just so you can avoid the ad.
I think key points to learn from social media is that ads cannot have a lot of copy, they need to look natural within their setting, they need to have great execution, and nobody should be forced to look at the ad.
Morgan's Blog 