Meta’s Instagram has concocted a new way to keep you from doomscrolling, but you’re not going to like it.
Called “ad break,” it’s a new way of displaying ads on the platform, and it’s apparently being tested with some users, with reports showing up on X and Reddit.
“Ad breaks are a new way of seeing ads on Instagram. Sometimes you may need to view an ad before you can keep browsing,” the feature’s description reads.
We’ve seen unskippable ads on other platforms, such as YouTube, where you’ll typically see such ads before a video starts (or, in the middle, if it’s a longer video). While these are annoying, at least YouTube videos are typically last longer than a few seconds, and on Instagram, you’re often blazing through posts a lot faster, apparently making ad breaks feel far more intrusive.
While we haven’t seen an ad break on Instagram personally, judging by the descriptions from users who have seen them, the new ad format sounds pretty intrusive. The ads pop up in the middle of your browsing, last a couple of seconds (with an included counter at the bottom), forcing you to watch the ad’s content before you can continue using the app.
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While ad breaks currently seem to be showing up for a small subset of Instagram users, the ones that are seeing them mostly hate it. On Reddit, basically every commenter said that they closed the app immediately after seeing these ads, and the sentiment on X is similarly negative.
“Meta has top tier UX designers, did they not do any research on this before pushing it onto the public? It completely disrupts the user’s flow,” said one Redditor.
“Wow just had my first one as well and am blown away. Kind of not surprised but I am because it’s such a bad way to control the user and force an ad. This is gonna piss a lot of people off,” said another.
It’s unclear how widespread the new format is, or whether Meta plans to expand it to more users. If it does, the company better be ready for some serious backlash.
Instagram has often been the target of criticism for being too aggressive with ads. In 2022, numerous users (me included) rebelled after their Instagram feed became mostly ads, prompting the company to fix the issue, saying that this was “not the intended experience.” We’ve reached out to the company about this new ad format, and will update this article when we hear back.
