Past Ads I Have Seen

I decided to go into my Instagram and check out some Ads I might have looked at in the past without even realizing it. I would say I use Instagram somewhat often but I do not usually look into Ads. Sometimes when I am scrolling through the home page an ad will show up but I normally will not click on it. I also get ads in between looking through people’s stories. They are usually promoting clothing, jewelry, and many other things. I think that it will be cool to see how far back I can look into ads I have saved or ads promoting something that I ended up purchasing.

I started by going into my account and tapping “Ad Preferences”. What first showed up was “Ad activity”. The only one in this category was an ad promoting a Pilates studio opening near me. I recall seeing this less than a week ago and I actually saw it when I was scrolling through Instagram reels. I recently found out that ads can show up while you are scrolling through videos on Instagram, similar to pop-up ads on TikTok.

Instagram ads look similar to normal posts but always contain a Sponsored label to indicate that they are an ad.  -HootsuiteBlog

Next, I looked into the section titled “Ads You Saved”. This had a good amount of ads, most of them consisting of clothing/fashion. I recognized one of them because I had bought a homecoming dress because of the ad. I saw this ad about 3 years ago and it appealed to me enough to purchase the dress. I actually bought the dress through the Instagram account that was promoting it. I think this article How do Instagram Ads Work? gives great insight as to how effective ads on Instagram can be to users. Most of these ads were pretty old, the newest ad being from 2 months ago.

According to Instagram, 50% of people surveyed said viewing an ad on the platform makes them more interested in a company. And in an Instagram case study, Bombas socks more than doubled their conversion rate and increased their return on ad spend by over 45% using Instagram ads.  -WebFX

Lastly, I looked through “Advertisers You Saw Ads From”. This one had a lot and I recognized many of the brands/companies that appeared. A few of these are brands that I have purchased from whether that be online or in-store. I think some of these must have shown up on my feed without me realizing it because I do not recall ever seeing them.

Overall, I think this was really interesting. Instagram still had ads I had saved that were nearly 3 years old. I know that Instagram also has a shop option where you can look at an ad and occasionally buy a product you see on Instagram through the app. You can save Ads, add items to your cart, and more. For anyone starting a business or company, I think that Instagram would be a great platform to use. There are many benefits and this article 5 Reasons Why Instagram Ads Really Work covers a few. I think that in regards to the ad preferences they all seemed relevant to my search history and what I look at on Instagram. A couple of them are companies or websites I have only visited on safari which was interesting to me.