Why Social Media Feels Like One Endless Advertisement
Destinee Quit Social Media—and Realized Most Content Was Ads
Why Social Media Feels Like One Endless Advertisement
After spending two weeks away from social media, Destinee Day expected to miss the entertainment, information, and recommendations she normally consumed.
Instead, she realized that much of her feed was not really content at all. It was advertising.
Some posts were clearly labeled sponsorships. Others were influencers displaying products, aspirational lifestyles, affiliate links, shopping pages, or AI-generated filler designed to hold attention between sales messages.
In this episode of Network Issues, Destinee and media scholar Jamie Cohen examine how entertainment, advertising, identity, and shopping have merged inside the modern social-media feed.
What Happens When You Take a Break From Social Media?
Destinee limited herself to approximately ten minutes of social-media use each evening.
Once scrolling time became scarce, she began evaluating posts differently. Content she previously saved, watched, or treated as useful suddenly felt repetitive, commercially motivated, or disposable.
She also found that she had more time for ordinary physical activities and felt less pressure to purchase things she had not been thinking about before opening an app.
Research on social-media breaks is mixed, but several controlled studies have found that temporarily reducing or stopping use can improve some measures of well-being, anxiety, depression, sleep, or mindfulness. The effects vary by person, platform, and how the break is structured. (PubMed)
A break does not automatically solve every problem associated with social media. It can, however, make normalized platform habits easier to notice.
Why Does Social Media Feel Like Advertising?
Traditional advertisements interrupted entertainment.
On social platforms, advertising is frequently integrated into the entertainment itself.
A feed may contain:
Clearly labeled brand advertisements
Sponsored influencer posts
Affiliate recommendations
Product demonstrations
Unboxings
Shopping links
Brand-funded travel
Lifestyle content featuring products
Creators promoting their own services
AI-generated filler placed between commercial messages
The viewer may experience the feed as a collection of personal stories. Commercially, it can function as a personalized shopping channel.
Are Influencers Salespeople?
Influencers may be entertainers, educators, critics, or community figures.
They are also frequently salespeople.
Their commercial value comes from the relationship they have developed with an audience. Followers may trust their taste, routines, personality, family life, or professional expertise.
That trust can be used to sell:
Clothing
Cosmetics
Software
Courses
Supplements
Travel
Financial products
Subscriptions
Political ideas
The creator’s own brand
The most effective influencer advertising does not always contain an explicit command to buy.
The creator displays the desired lifestyle, and the audience already understands where to find the product link.
Why Are Influencer Ads So Effective?
Influencer ads reduce the distance between the advertisement and the consumer.
A television commercial presents a polished scenario created by a brand. An influencer can make the same product appear inside a bedroom, kitchen, morning routine, workday, family story, or personal recommendation.
The message feels less like:
A company wants me to buy this.
And more like:
Someone I know and trust uses this.
That perceived intimacy makes sponsorship disclosure especially important. The Federal Trade Commission says material relationships between influencers and brands should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Disclosures should be easy to notice and understand, and a platform’s built-in disclosure tool may not always be sufficient by itself. (Federal Trade Commission)
Why Does Advertising Make People Feel Inadequate?
Advertising often begins by creating or intensifying a gap between the consumer’s current life and an imagined better version.
The message may imply:
Your clothes are outdated.
Your skin needs improvement.
Your home is unfinished.
Your career is behind.
Your body should look different.
Your routine is inefficient.
Everyone else already has the product.
The product is then presented as the bridge between inadequacy and completion.
Destinee describes feeling less urgency to buy things after leaving social media. The products still existed, but the repeated reminders that she needed them disappeared.
What Is Frictionless Shopping?
Frictionless shopping reduces the number of steps between seeing a product and purchasing it.
A social-media post may allow viewers to:
See an influencer wearing a product
Tap the post
Open the creator’s shopping page
Select the exact item
Complete the purchase through a saved account
Each removed step leaves less time to reconsider the purchase.
The creator does not have to state a call to action because the platform has trained audiences to understand the pathway from inspiration to checkout.
Why Do Algorithms Show Us More Commercial Content?
Recommendation systems use behavioral signals to predict which posts are most likely to hold attention or produce an action.
Those signals may include:
Viewing time
Replays
Likes
Comments
Saves
Shares
Clicks
Searches
Accounts followed
Previous purchases
Meta says its recommendation systems analyze content and interaction signals to predict what users may find relevant. Its advertising systems similarly use predictive models to estimate the likelihood of actions such as clicks, views, or purchases. (Meta AI)
This means even negative engagement can shape the feed. Watching an irritating advertisement for several seconds may still teach the system that the subject captures attention.
What Is AI Slop?
AI slop is a critical term for large amounts of low-effort, repetitive, or misleading content generated with artificial intelligence.
It may include:
Fake photographs
Synthetic animal videos
Rewritten articles
Automated motivational posts
Generated product recommendations
Fabricated stories
Repetitive list videos
Fake historical imagery
Not all AI-assisted content is low quality.
The term is generally used when synthetic production prioritizes volume, engagement, or advertising inventory over accuracy, originality, or value.
AI slop can make feeds feel fuller while giving audiences less that is worth remembering.
What Is Enshittification?
Enshittification is a term associated with writer Cory Doctorow for the process through which platforms gradually become worse for users as they prioritize business customers, advertising, extraction, and shareholder interests.
In the episode, Jamie and Destinee discuss a similar process: a creator or platform may begin with useful or entertaining content, then become increasingly dominated by shopping links, sponsorships, automated material, and promotional posts.
The feed remains technically usable, but the user experience deteriorates.
Why Do We Pay to Avoid Ads but Scroll Through Them for Free?
Many people pay for premium streaming plans specifically to remove advertisements.
They may then ignore those ad-free programs while spending hours on social-media feeds filled with:
Paid placements
Product recommendations
Affiliate marketing
Brand integrations
Shopping links
Self-promotion
The difference is interruption.
A television commercial announces itself by stopping the program. Social advertising often presents itself as the program.
That makes it easier to consume without recognizing how commercial the experience has become.
How Has Product Placement Changed?
Product placement once meant inserting a recognizable brand into a film or television program.
Modern integration can go much further.
A company may own or fund the entertainment platform, produce original programming, and fill that programming with its devices and services.
Apple productions frequently feature Apple hardware because the products belong naturally within the company’s wider ecosystem.
This form of integration is less disruptive than a character suddenly reciting brand copy. The product simply appears to belong in the world of the story.
The audience may remember the mood and status associated with the product without consciously experiencing a sales pitch.
Why Does Nostalgic Advertising Still Work?
Jamie traces integrated advertising back through television programs sponsored directly by companies and early variety shows built around brand ownership.
Sponsored content is not new.
What is new is the degree of personalization, portability, and proximity.
The advertisement now exists:
In the consumer’s hand
Inside a creator’s life
Beside an instant purchase link
Within a personalized feed
Across multiple devices
At any hour of the day
Modern advertising is less likely to feel like a separate media category.
It is part of the environment.
Do Smart Speakers Record Everything?
The episode raises a common privacy concern after Destinee notices a smart speaker activating during another conversation.
According to Amazon, Echo devices process audio locally to detect a wake word and do not send audio to the cloud unless the wake word or activation button is detected. False activations can occur, and users can review or delete recordings and disable the microphone. (Amazon)
The transcript should therefore avoid stating as fact that the device continually uploads or uses all room conversations for advertising.
A more accurate concern is that smart devices contain always-available microphones, can activate mistakenly, and participate in larger data and advertising ecosystems that users may not fully understand.
How Does Influencer Marketing Produce Conformity?
Influencer culture promises individuality.
Follow this person’s style. Build this person’s home. Buy this person’s skincare. Recreate this person’s routine.
But large audiences often receive similar recommendations from different creators.
The result can be a paradox:
People express individuality by purchasing the same products.
The influencer may be different. The bag, water bottle, skincare product, phone case, or furniture may be identical.
Personalization occurs in the messenger more than the product.
How Can You Make a Social-Media Feed Less Commercial?
A complete detox is not the only option.
Practical steps include:
Use a scheduling tool for professional accounts.
Access platforms through a desktop browser.
Unfollow shopping-heavy creators.
Disable unnecessary notifications.
Remove saved payment details.
Add a waiting period before purchases.
Use dedicated news or RSS apps.
Reset recommendation topics where available.
Set a limited daily access window.
Ask whether a saved post has ever been used.
The goal is not necessarily to eliminate every advertisement.
It is to restore enough friction to make conscious choices.
The Network Issues Feed Audit
Before following a link or purchasing a product, ask:
Is this content or an advertisement?
Is the creator being paid?
What insecurity or aspiration is being activated?
Would I want this if I had not opened the app?
Is the recommendation based on expertise or aesthetics?
Have I seen the same product from several influencers?
Is the purchase easy because the platform removed deliberation?
What happens if I wait 48 hours?
Key Takeaways
A social-media break can reveal how much feed content is commercially motivated.
Influencer marketing works because advertising is integrated into personal stories and lifestyles.
The FTC expects material relationships between influencers and brands to be clearly disclosed.
Recommendation systems learn from attention, not just stated preferences.
AI slop increases content volume without necessarily increasing value.
Paid, ad-free entertainment still competes with commercial feeds optimized for constant access.
Product placement increasingly operates as part of a company’s entire media ecosystem.
Influencer culture can sell conformity through the language of individuality.
Adding friction can reduce impulsive scrolling and shopping.
Questions Answered in This Episode
What is a social-media detox?
A social-media detox is a temporary period of stopping or substantially reducing social-platform use.
Do social-media breaks improve mental health?
Some studies have found benefits for well-being, depression, anxiety, sleep, or mindfulness, but outcomes vary and the broader evidence remains mixed.
Why does social media contain so many ads?
Advertising funds much of the platform economy, while influencer marketing allows promotional messages to appear as entertainment, education, or lifestyle content.
Are influencers required to disclose ads?
In the United States, material relationships with brands generally need to be disclosed clearly and conspicuously.
What is AI slop?
AI slop is low-value or repetitive synthetic content produced primarily for scale, traffic, or engagement.
How can I stop impulse buying from social media?
Remove saved payment details, wait before purchasing, unfollow commercial accounts, and ask whether you wanted the item before opening the app.
About the Hosts
Jamie Cohen
Jamie Cohen is a media scholar, professor, writer, and expert on internet culture, online extremism, memes, media literacy, and the manosphere.
Website: jamesncohen.com
Substack: New Media Homework
Destinee Day
Destinee Day is a marketing strategist and founder of Rudy & Company. Her work focuses on branding, digital strategy, communications, online influence, and responsible marketing.
Website: rudyandcompany.com
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Destinee Day (00:01.046)
Okay, so I wanted to start today's conversation off by saying that I have been off of my social medias for two weeks now. And I'm really proud of myself. All the benefits that people say happened happened, but I think the biggest thing that I noticed and I wanted to have this conversation with you is that I have a 10 minute block at like 10 o'clock at night that I'm allowed to be on social media.
Jamie (00:10.283)
Damn.
Destinee Day (00:30.464)
And so I have to like be efficient with my time. And I thought that would be really hard. But the number one thing that I noticed is that most of the content that I was consuming is ads. then that became, I said this to my husband and he was like, you know, that's actually kind of crazy because we pay all the premium subscriptions for our streaming services so that we don't get ads. But he was like, I'm
Jamie (00:45.31)
Mmm.
Jamie (02:20.609)
Where you going? Where'd you go? Where are you? Oh, you can't see the knife. Too much reflection on the window. That's a knife and a screwdriver. This phone is my phone from college. One of my many phones from college. It's ET. That's my grandpa's stopwatches.
That's a Superman comic I found on the floorboards of my grandpa's house when we were tearing it apart. It's from 1944. That's a painting or photograph from Kat Sheldon. Very good photographer. That's a newspaper front page of the Daily Tribune from 1849. That's me quoted in a Japanese newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun. That's my graduation sixth grade.
my graduation from grad school. Can't see the whole thing on this though. That's a card from my grandpa ran for office. What just happened?
Destinee Day (03:26.318)
my gosh.
Is this another story time? I don't know my whole...
Jamie (03:32.193)
Are you watching me? Where did you go?
Destinee Day (03:40.211)
Everything went it was I don't know. got hacked boom everything went down
Jamie (03:43.699)
All right. Well, it's still recording. That was a good opening, though. Can you do that opening again? Your resolution is like potato right now, so.
Destinee Day (03:52.063)
Yeah, I will.
Destinee Day (03:56.821)
Okay, it looks clear on mine though. So it should up.
Jamie (03:59.114)
Okay, it'll probably clear up. Yeah, it should clear up as you as you upload you should clear you are now you're clear again. Okay. All right. Can you do that again? Because that was a really good that was a good lead in you just have to do that again. I like that. All right, good. Okay.
Destinee Day (04:12.215)
Okay, I'm gonna start over. Okay. Okay, so I have spent two weeks off of all social media, with the exception of 10 minutes, if I make it there at 10 o'clock every single night. The biggest thing I noticed and that I wanna have a conversation with you about today is that I thought 10 minutes wouldn't be enough to go through and consume all of the content that I felt like I needed to consume every day.
But it turns out a lot of it is garbage. A lot of it is either AI slop or influencer ads. And so I was talking to my husband saying, I can't believe I used to think all of this was important. I can't believe that I used to go through and compulsory save things thinking that I would come back and use them. And he goes, it's actually super crazy. He was like, we pay all the premium.
subscriptions so that we don't get ads on any of our streams. We don't want to be interrupted by ads. And he was like, but I've been sitting here on my phone basically consuming ads, not even looking at the content that I pay premium subscription for with zero ads. And he was like, the dichotomy of it is actually kind of crazy. And he was like, we've just moved ads to our hands instead of
having them interrupt the content that we're not even paying attention to anyways. And so I was like, what an interesting and fascinating concept. And I wanted to have that conversation with you.
Jamie (05:50.782)
Yeah, I'd love to talk about this. I'm teaching a course on sponsored content. it's this is a perfect. This is a great conversation to have about what are we watching? Yeah. And it's first off, I'm proud of you. That's great. mean, spending two weeks off social media, how does that feel? It's got to feel pretty good, right? Like getting that nice disconnect.
Destinee Day (06:09.377)
for a long time. Yeah, well, didn't know what to, I was Ricky Bobby. I didn't know what to do with my hands.
Jamie (06:16.159)
Yeah, what do I do with them? Yeah, so used to holding this device. And now all of a it's like, now what am I now I have to touch things? What is this grass? Should I touch this?
Destinee Day (06:19.447)
Thanks.
Destinee Day (06:24.597)
Right? Well, I mean, a couple of weekends ago, I literally, was like, I'm not scrolling, I don't know what to do. And I was like, my gosh, I could go mow the lawn. Like that's what I could do.
Jamie (06:37.761)
You actually freed up time to do just things, yeah.
Destinee Day (06:41.783)
I was like, can't believe. Yeah, but no, it's been awesome. And I feel like the Zoom Out allows you to see the weeds that you're stuck in, which is.
Jamie (06:56.692)
Yeah. Yeah, you can't we normalize the content. We talked about this. I was getting like really deep in the doom scroll hole. And like, I realized like it was becoming a little too apparent in front of my children. So I was like, oh, you know what, so there's a study that's out there that like, says that when you look at your screen, it's about seven seconds. That's how much time you lose attached to the world around you like about seven seconds, which seems little, but it's actually a lot. You're technically
for seven whole seconds, you're disconnected, which is like how accidents happen. In seven seconds, you could like die in a car. But those seven seconds to a child are a long time. So it's like, you try to stay off the device and you could really like start realizing how much you don't need to be on it. Now I know you're using a tool that's helping you, which is really amazing. As you know, like I'm paid to actually look at this stuff. So I have to like.
I have to, it's a lot more like self-control than it is tool-based, but like I'm very jealous and proud of like knowing that you were able to do that.
Destinee Day (07:57.033)
used to be you. I said the same thing that you said because I'm a social media person. That's my job. do you know, like, I use a tool to schedule all my posts out. I can see the comments through the scheduler. So it's a third party. I don't have to go in the platform where I get distracted and then forget why I'm even in there. And you know that I'm scrolling about like, you know, dog toys or whatever. But
Jamie (08:03.221)
Yeah, you are, you have to see this.
Destinee Day (08:25.835)
Then also the news app. Like now I actually get news from the news app, which is not awesome either, but it is different. And then anytime I absolutely have to be on, I can go on through my desktop, which as a millennial, know, that's for big purchases only. And so there is a zoom out that happens there. And it's not right.
Jamie (08:30.145)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (08:52.801)
The big machine.
Destinee Day (08:55.379)
It's not so consuming when it's on, like I'm able to be like, I don't know, it's so different when.
Jamie (09:02.931)
It is also emotionally different. You're right. Like using the news app, especially is technically news and you're reading the news rather than a newspaper, but it's also less histrionic. Like whenever I open an app, like blue sky or threads and like I, before I do it, I close my eyes and go, what fresh hell am I going to see now? You know, like, because it's the way people interpret the news is obviously they're doing their own interpretations, but it's very, it's, guess this will lead us to what we're talking about. It's compelling. It feels like we agree with that. And
The way they say it makes my heart race in a way that just reading the news where I'm allowed to do the adjustment on it is like a little different. So you're right. it's probably far healthier to be reading the news from a news perspective than even if the news is like whatever, but like the, like it's probably much healthier that way. So that's, that's really great. Like that is cool. And yes, yeah. But the other thing too is like you and I both have enough long-term experience in the field, in the field. It's just like we rolled the television where we were actually out in the field.
Destinee Day (09:59.735)
You
Jamie (09:59.778)
And now like our film and like, now we're like the field is like a digital atmosphere, a digital environment. But you have enough sense now that like you, when you open, when you do have access to it and you see the feeds and you see what's being presented, I know you have an instinctual knowledge of what the trend is. Like you could feel the, I always say it's like you could, you're a good weatherman of the internet. You have, you could sense the barometer, you know, like, you know, you know, if the sense is going up or down and so you know where you are at any given time. It's not like you have to sit there and doom scroll and get it.
it's, it's so you're a professional. it is, it is good. Yeah. We are, we're professionals. It's that's, that's the difference between what we do and like people who don't have long-term experience in this. Like it is, it is like, could become an expert of this just by use, but it is something that of a in-depth knowledge that you have, like that I don't even have in terms of analytics, metrics, knowledge of posting, where I'm much more like content aware.
you know, so it's, it's, it's a lot more it's, it's these skills are not easy to attain. But I do imagine like the mental health of like, avoidance or refusal is like super, super helpful. So, go ahead.
Destinee Day (11:10.803)
yeah. mean, no, I was gonna say like it, I think part of the mental healthiness is I'm not looking at essentially ads all day telling me you're, it always felt like, you you're not enough not to get too deep down a mental hole, right? But that's how you sell things. You sell things.
Jamie (11:33.729)
Mm.
Destinee Day (11:38.871)
to make people feel FOMO. You want them to buy what you have and you need to convince them that they need it. part of that manipulation, like that's manipulation and part of that manipulation is having to convince someone that they need the product that you're selling, whatever it is. B2B SaaS or clothes from Amazon, doesn't matter.
Jamie (11:56.874)
Right. Yeah. I mean, we could take the romantic view of Don Draper and like just look at it and say like ads are made for you to feel like everything's okay. You know, like that you're okay, which is a lie because it's a lie created by the ad industry to make you basically make you feel like you're not okay until you purchase the thing and then you're okay. And that's yeah, it is. It's designed. I like it. You put as FOMO because yeah, it is really, it's a jealousy device, but it really is an inadequacy.
Destinee Day (12:16.79)
Mm-hmm.
Jamie (12:24.833)
machine is advertising as an industry, which is that you as a consumer really need to increase your consumption in order to feel even. And then of course, because time moves forward that in the 1960s, there's this paper about something called the hedonistic treadmill, which is that you normalize every purchase. And so every time you get this like nice cool feeling, it just becomes like normal. And then now you have to buy again. So as you keep on turning it into this very, very standard treadmill process of
like buying, owning, normalizing and keep on going. But I think the immersivity of advertising now is just, I mean, he's multiple words is ubiquitous and omnipresent, just all synonyms for just being everywhere. And it is, it's like, now you get like, it isn't just an ad presenting a lifestyle that is fictional on a screen. And then you kind of have to be like, oh, I could aspire to that. Now it's like people, just humans, just humans are
marketing or advertising a product into your space, into your literal space, like intimately, because like the device, when you're looking at a phone, you're closer to the subject on the screen than you would be in real life. Like if somebody's inside your personal bubble when you're watching that. So ads are not only like there, but they're like close, you know? It's not like an ad where you're watching a TV and you could still at least feel disconnected or at least have a distance to it. then like,
have that buyer's consumer choice of being like, well, I don't actually need it because the commercial has gone away. But the immersiveness of the commercial being like in your palm of your hand, like you can't, there's no avoidance for that, except for what you're doing, which is literally avoiding it.
Destinee Day (14:06.059)
Well, it's, I mean, to take it deeper, right? The influencer ads, and I just saw this pop up on one of the creator Instagrams that, know, that Masari and Meta run, is that you have the ability to put a link to whatever you want someone to purchase right there in the ad. And there's still that disconnect when you're watching it on your TV screen, right? But to have,
to have it in the palm of your hand in the most intimate device that you own and be able to say, want that boom and have it be super instant. Super awesome for the ad industry. Super detrimental to human mental health because I haven't felt the need to like purchase anything. Like it's so awesome. I used to feel like overwhelmed by.
Jamie (15:02.465)
Interesting.
Destinee Day (15:05.787)
I need to have this kit to do this kind of social media stuff or, you know, I need to have this shirt to look this way or whatever, name that thing. And I don't feel the immediacy.
Jamie (15:19.171)
wow. So that's the that I think is the fix, right? Like, that's not to be such an intriguingly great feeling, like, just to be kind of free of that, Yeah, this is exactly why they don't want you using those tools. The the idea of what most areas doing or Zuckerberg is that a word that comes from Facebook, it's frictionless. It was a I think Zuckerberg started using it. not for his, but it started using around like the late 20s.
Destinee Day (15:28.343)
I don't want anything.
Jamie (15:48.32)
late 2000s, early 2010s. And it was frictionless consumerism, which is that exactly what you said, which is the faster you could pass somebody from the knowledge to the cart to the sale is less chances of having somebody having buyer's remorse or cart remorse. So if you, those buttons, those instant access to the productization of stuff is like part of the technology. It's a technology. And that's like...
I think people forget too, when they're looking at ads on screen, that they're looking at technology. It might be influencers like doing this, but you're actually just looking at how it is a flow from the product to your cart. And I think the only thing they have left to solve is like the speed and delivery. Because now you can still make a purchase, but it's still gonna be a day or two or maybe even three before it even shows up at your house. And so that is still a gap for them. But I think the first half where which they introduce a product that makes you feel inadequate and you need to.
feel complete by purchasing it, that's done. And like influencers have taken the wall away. Like now it's like, now you're just talking to a friend who's like, you should buy this. Okay, I'll buy this, you know? And that is an evolution of advertising that I think, so in my SponCon class, I've been discussing quite significantly that I think what we're looking at is just basically the birth of the next iteration of media. So as TV and everything continues to evolve, because I think we could,
easily say at this point that traditional media sees no longer exists, but exists in its structure. Like it exists as in like, we're still make TV shows that are 22 minutes, we still make TV shows that are 44 minutes, those still pertain to hour clocks, like you still tune in at three o'clock for something that's appointment. And, but on online, it could be three minutes, 58 seconds, it could be 12 minutes, it could be 45 seconds, any of these times only matter to the length of time that the content matters. And so
And it doesn't have to be a clock. Like your 10 minutes at night could be somebody else's 10 minutes in the morning. So there's no real attachment so much as like it's made for you. And of course what you insinuated, what's probably damning for the companies by you not being on it is the less you're on it, the less data they have to collect. So the less specifically advertising is to you, which is like the dream of advertisers since the Mad Men era. know, like they knew they were putting commercials out.
Jamie (18:11.905)
But a TV is like, you don't know who's sitting in front of it. You have no idea like if it's on, if it's on in another room, you don't know if that ad actually got consumed. You don't know if somebody like who they are. You don't know how many people, don't know if it's a, what your demographic is. You just know like that it is on TV. That's who you know. And you know what television show you bought it for. So you can kind of make an assumption of the audience, but the device itself had no capture ability, you know? So it's like now,
just by holding the thing, just by holding that device, like the data inside of a phone is nuts because the time you have that at night tells the ad agencies a lot about you when you're accessing the media, accessing it at night versus the day. The data of literally like how you hold the phone, are you holding it vertically on a train, are you holding it sideways and looking up at it? know, like those pieces of data are accumulated into the machine to make them understand how you use machines.
And when you use the machine, what type of data gets sold back to the advertiser? So it delivers you the content it thinks you want. It's all predictive anyway. And typically the more you use it, the better it is. It doesn't mean it's perfect, but it does get better. And a lot of people enjoy ads. I think on recent surveys, the surveys come back where it's like, people prefer ads that are customized. People prefer ads that target them rather than ads that just exist. So it's it's...
It's a well done machine. It's figured itself out.
Destinee Day (19:44.639)
I don't know, I just think about every conversation I've ever had where I had the ability to deliver a very personalized ad.
and having to have like a leadership level discussion about it because are people going to disqualify us because it's so personal and therefore creepy? And are we going to be removed from consideration because so personal and therefore people think we're creepy? If people think we're creepy, they definitely know that we're pulling their data. And if we know that much about them,
I know it used to be that way. I don't necessarily know if it's that way anymore because more and more and more people do it. But I've definitely been a part of those discussions.
Jamie (20:28.139)
Yeah.
Jamie (20:31.765)
Wow, yeah, that's so interesting. Like you want people to feel like their ads are customized, but you definitely can't let them know you're watching. Like then it like you kind of crossed the line between what is somebody's comfort level with what they're consuming versus the fact that you do know more than you're letting on. That is, wow, that is, wow, I don't, that's a tough thing for people to really understand. You're absolutely right. That is.
When you're in those types of high level meetings too, I'm sure there are people in those meetings who are just like, get closer. And you're like, no, you can't do that.
Destinee Day (21:06.721)
Yeah!
Well, earlier this week during your office hours segment that you did, I was sitting here listening on my computer and right behind my computer, I have my Amazon listening device that I will not say the name or she'll talk to me. And as you were talking, that little light was spinning and I was like, no.
She definitely hears all of it. I have no idea, but she was the entire thing. I went and unplugged it. I was like, this is making me uncomfortable.
Jamie (21:40.725)
What did I say that activated it? Interesting.
Jamie (21:51.522)
Well, I mean, that's something that I mean, when we were when we worked together at the last institution, like we there was one in the office, one in the lab. And like I would talk to it often just to ask a question like here and there, like having it basically a roboticized AI agent. But like as a joke, I would often like add things to the cart because I know it was like my colleague's cart. But it was it's it is interesting because sometimes it would just wake up and the device in my house to which I don't have any bots and
Well, I'm not going to say its name here because I'm too many in the ecosystem. They often turn on for no reason whatsoever and just talk, say, I don't know what you're doing. I'm like, forget that there's a live microphone in this room. like, so there's this whole entire thing, this discourse before we get into like the content itself, there is this discourse of how much data is being acquired at any given time. And it is, it's, let's make it clear here that you are not being recorded.
all the time, but you are being recorded on the bookends of the ask. So if you ask it, it actually is recording. There's a buffer recording happening at all times. In other words, technically, yes, it is recording you all the time. It's just deleting it right after. As soon as you activate it, it puts the play head a little further back into the past and all the way into the future to hear what leads up to the ask. So it can use that data as keyword searches. And those keywords end up becoming like your new search algorithm. And so that's why when people are like, it like,
it heard me or it like predicts something that I only thought of, I never said out loud. It's like, no, it's not actually reading your mind. What it's doing is comparing it to tens of thousands, if not millions of people who have said the word out loud, because they're similar consumers to you. So now all it's doing is predicting something based on the cumulative audience that's out there. So the creepiness exists. I'm just, I'm sure that when you're in a group of people and they're like, well, how do we make this ad marketing better? And you're like, we could.
but it would freak the people out. You gotta like tone down the whole idea of like, there are, we have the tools to make that happen, but the consumer doesn't like that. And they probably will not, or at least optimistically, it's not something that people want. Because you, I think what we'll talk about here is like, it's already the point where advertisements are being delivered by our friends, like influencers, you know, like those are the people we trust. They're called influencers for a reason. And I think what you're getting at is like,
Jamie (24:16.737)
People forget that when you use the term influencers, you're talking about salespeople. That's it. Like, why are they called influencers? It's because they influence your purchases. That's they're doing. They're not influential so much as they're influencing. So that's a good media literacy trick that you have to like remind people, which is like, it's a cool nickname for people, but they are salespeople.
Destinee Day (24:31.063)
Yeah.
Destinee Day (24:41.025)
They are. And the best salespeople integrate into the machine so seamlessly that they never actually say a call to action. The best ones never tell you what to do next. You already know and you already do it.
Jamie (24:56.287)
Right.
Jamie (25:02.497)
Yes. Yeah. Wow, that's a good point. Yeah.
Destinee Day (25:07.479)
I think about it in terms of like, you know, I like fashion. like clothes. I see a girl's outfit on Instagram that I like. At this point, the algorithm has trained me to know the next step is I go to her link in bio. I click to see if she has an LTK or a shop my, and I pull it up and see what the most recent posts are that are date stamped to align with that post.
Jamie (25:33.386)
Yeah. So she's part she's she's mechanical, you know, it's like, she knows the machine as well as you know, the machine, she just knows that you're going to seek that pathway to do that. So it's like they they they've become contemporary rarely part of the machine itself like that. Wow, this is this is good. This is is a to think about. So, okay, so what's interesting, I think about the immersivity about the commercialization of everything.
before we even get into the idea of insidification, because this is like pre-insidification. So insidification isn't when influencers are influencing and making these types of things. There is another step that happens after this, which is eventually they become embedded in like the TikTok shop or the Instagram shop. And eventually they muck up their own content to the point where their page is unusable. That's insidification. Like that spreads quicker because it's a lot easier to be creepy. And that's when you use the creepy data.
the platforms itself become terrible to use. They're just really hard to use because then you're only getting slop instead of information. So that's the next thing. But before we reach that, where you're at the point where influencers are like basically communicating with you as a commercial, they are just their version of content, the idea of sponsor content. And we're not even talking about brand integration where they're like, you know, picking up a product and like putting it on the screen. They're like, they are the ad itself.
And it does remind me of like this era that's in my class, we basically talk about the fact that this is not new. Okay, this is how visual media has existed. The first hit TV show 1948 through 1954 was Texaco Star Theater with Milton Berle. And it was called Texaco Star Theater. And so I always ask my students like, what are they selling? Because if it's sponsored content, Texaco, the gas station, the petrol company,
sponsors the television programming to host Milton Berle's variety hour. And it always has like interjections. So it starts with the Texaco men like cleaning cars and then the middle of the car. It's like they're the comic relief throughout the entire thing. And so they asked the students, was like, what are they selling? And students were like gasoline. It like, they're not selling gasoline, they're selling televisions. They're making more people want to watch TV. So what they're doing is expanding the scale before they get to the next step. So it's like this.
Jamie (27:56.854)
What we're living through right now is the Texaco Star theaterification of everything, where all media itself is so sponsored content that they're selling the next stage of something, which I think is the next stage of device access or social media or minimization of external media. Because as we're going forward through media, like traditional media, you know, it still exists and it still does its thing, but
It's not as successful because like you said, like avoiding commercials is what you pay for. You pay for the idea of premium TV or prestige TV where you're like, if I pay a subscription, I don't have to see the ads because I'm subscribing to it. But advertisers don't like that. Advertisers feel like then you're missing out on how to get some sort of piece of content that goes like to you that you would like to really see or really own. And it's like really hard for like.
the companies to agree to minimization of commercialization.
Destinee Day (29:03.497)
No, I mean, I just what it makes me think of now is some of the companies have answered that the minimization of ads breaking up the content and they've done I think a lot about Apple where they're making their own content. And if you watch a show like Shrinking, for example, it's one of the most popular ones on
Jamie (29:23.499)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (29:32.777)
streaming services right now, everybody has an iPhone, everybody has a MacBook, everybody has an iPad, you will not see another type of technology in that show. And they don't say it outright, which thank God, but it's very visible, right? It makes you see that. So then if you're wanting to become a therapist and you really like the show shrinking, then you would say, well, obviously I'm gonna go get a MacBook or things like that.
Jamie (30:01.938)
Yeah.
Destinee Day (30:02.849)
That's another form of advertising that is a lot more low key, but I think only works if you have a hit TV show.
Jamie (30:15.813)
And it's such a good point. It is so different than traditional sponsored content. Traditional sponsored content requires or even modern sponsored content, like content where brand partnerships, you know, where the brand has to say it its habits mentioned in it. You know, it has to have a certain slug line or something in which like the brand itself has delivered pieces of the script to the producer to say this has got to go on air. And I do remember like, I worked on I've worked on a lot of SponCon and one of the earliest was a reality show I worked on for MTVU.
MTV's College Network, the long defunct commercial thing. I still have its notepad. That's the MTVU logo. God, I miss, I kind of miss it, but it was like still stupid because it's still MTV, but just for like, look at me, look at that, look at that early 2000s.
Destinee Day (30:53.986)
I remember.
Destinee Day (31:00.213)
Thank you.
the original short form content though, like MTV was just music videos.
Jamie (31:05.621)
Yes. Yep.
That's right. And music videos were an ad for the band, you know, to sell tickets. And so the reality show I worked on was this several episode competition, six, three college couples go to six different schools and can only keep in contact via text message. Okay. Now today that's like, that seems easy. You know, that nobody likes to talk on the phone anyway. But the time that was like really difficult, like 2005, early 2006.
where like texting was like annoying as shit. There's, you see, that's kind of the phone people had at the time, you know? So was like T9 typing or like tap typing. Like, so LOL was 555-666-555, you know? So it was, you had to like type these things out. And so it was annoying, let's put it that way. But there was this funny lines, because the show is sponsored by Yahoo. And I'm well past my NDA at this point, so I can talk about it.
Destinee Day (31:45.152)
It was
Jamie (32:06.021)
And they gave us like lines because I think it was only Yahoo products that were allowed to be used. I can only use Yahoo Mail or Yahoo Messenger. think there's, yeah, Yahoo had its own messenger. But to squeeze those lines in for like these normal kids, they were college kids. I'm like, I'm gonna text my girlfriend. I was like, wait, can you say that again? But can you say, I'm gonna text my girlfriend on my Yahoo Messenger? And they're just like, I would never say that out loud. It's like, we were saying it out loud for this show. The inauthenticity of that really threw the plot off. It really throws off like,
Destinee Day (32:29.451)
Yeah.
Jamie (32:36.639)
what we're trying to do in cell. And I don't think that increases sales, but if you show the product as frictionless and you don't think about it and you don't know it, but you do know the mood of it, it just becomes the ad itself. Like the content is infused and it's literally down to its pixels as an advertisement. And that is much more digestible for the audience.
Destinee Day (33:00.631)
Did you ever watch 30 Rock? I've seen that show probably 50, 60 times all the way through. Like that's what got me through college, right? Loved that show. But there's that scene where Jack Donaghy is explaining first vertical integration and then how he gets an ad from one of their random.
Jamie (33:02.932)
Of course. Yeah.
Jamie (33:08.353)
no.
Destinee Day (33:24.427)
things down into the show and how all of it is tied together in a massive ecosystem and what GE owns and why this is placed in this way and all of the things. And I remember thinking, my gosh.
But it's so
Jamie (33:41.122)
There was that one, I don't know, maybe you could use the clip for this without copyright problems. don't know. When they're like, oh, Liz Lemon's like, oh, we would never do that. She's like, oh, this new Snapple Lemon tea is just so good. And then they turned to the camera blightly. Like, can I have my money now? I love people pointing out The Fourth Wall as sponsored content because when you do integrated advertising, a la Truman Show.
Like it feels too forced or feels like unnatural because people just don't think about brands. just, they know they're there. They're very brand loyal. Gen Z and millennials in particular, extremely brand loyal. They are more silent about their brands. They don't wear them as much. They just like them. So it's like, can't, nobody's going to walk around and be like, like, and talk about and say it. That's why your CPG comes in. Like consumer...
consumer packaged goods, know, like the American idea of like, what does a good product look like? And like, that's now how you integrate even better brands like Drunk Elephant and Glow Recipe are like beautiful, beautiful containers. But that's this way influencers can keep them in the background and they're recognizable. You don't have to say the brand, you just know that it's there because they're so uniquely branded that people can see it. And so that's the type of branding that young people really like to
incorporate or like understand because then they say, Oh, is that something that I could not only use or buy, but it's something I can leave in the background. And I made a joke with my students because it's like, it's expensive. think like drunk elephants like $80 or something. It's like for like a small bit of like cream. What?
Destinee Day (35:19.031)
Well, if you go and you talk to the people at Sephora, they will tell you it's overpriced. Don't go buy this. Here is something that does the same thing, but because it's not in the Drunk Elephant packaging, you're getting more and it's less like price wise. Yeah.
Jamie (35:37.922)
So then I've asked my students that the same question of like, then why don't you buy the dupe and put it in the drunk elephant container? know? So, and they're like, ew. I was like, but it's the same. You just told me it was the same thing. But again, that's about the authenticity of advertising because I think the big shift happened in an era was known as like cinematic advertising. And cinematic advertising was really like launched in 1984.
Destinee Day (35:50.72)
Yes.
Jamie (36:04.865)
by like Apple. It was around long before probably in the mid 1960s. It started 1971 or two is the Coca Cola hillside commercial, which is like all those hippies on the hillside singing, which what? Don't spoil it. What are you doing? That's one of the best hidden parts of bad men in the whole series. It's like that's like why bad men is like a pre rectum.
Destinee Day (36:19.841)
Mad Men. Isn't that the one? Well that doesn't, you don't know, you don't know.
Jamie (36:34.945)
for my classes. But then again, like people have had like a decade, right? It is a decade, you could have watched the show and you should watch the show. 1984 introduces that and then finally by the late 90s, like the atomization, the also the introduction of the mail market, like into cosmetics or like looks like that was a new thing in the 1990s. And so now it was like, too distant, it was harder for brands to like just advertise directly.
And so like in the early 2000s, the cinematic ads appeared, but that was also a reaction to the technology of DVR. Like now you buy premium streaming, like the streaming modes are so different, but people forget like DVR and like TiVo was a huge threat to the ad industry. TiVo was such a strange technology because it basically created the idea of streaming. It would start a show about eight minutes late.
And so what it would do is it would buffer out the commercials. So you would just watch the show without the commercials because it basically just edited it, you know? And advertisers like freaking out. They actually like went into a lot of lawsuits about it, like blocking it, which is the same sort of precedent that Elon Musk kind of leaned on when advertisers are backing out of X, because he was just like, well, I'll just sue you. That type of thing is so interesting that to give you a real realization that advertising is just part and parcel of programming.
And at the beginning of this, you mentioned that like, you don't want the interruptions of your content, but I argue that like the content is the commercial, your show is the interruption. So it's like, that's, what?
Destinee Day (38:02.295)
We'll look at this.
the Super Bowl, right? If your isn't playing, you used to watch for the commercials.
Jamie (38:06.282)
All right.
Jamie (38:11.145)
Right. Right.
Destinee Day (38:12.435)
I would say maybe you don't anymore, but that you watch for the interruption. That was the whole deal.
Jamie (38:18.177)
Yeah, and now you don't really even have to because now they distribute all the commercials on YouTube beforehand, which I don't personally like. I like that the people would watch it because that was kind like the appointment of the Super Bowl. In fact, this year's Super Bowl was, I think, the third most watched, but the first most watched halftime show. But to make the show the most watched TV show of the year is because of the commercials. We forget that it is a TV show. Sure, you're watching the biggest sports event, but it is a commercials program.
And now when like, what I do like about influencer content that really gets it, that like truly gets the content, I really like the idea that the brand itself, like kind of inhabits the influencer's life. Like they are just, get it. And when they get it, you no longer have to feel like you're watching inauthentic media. You could feel like you're watching somebody who's naturally selling you a product without making you feel like shit, which is what commercials used to do. Now you're just like, I could do enhancements on my life rather than feel like shit and.
my life.
Destinee Day (39:18.775)
It's very aspirational. The influence of success is entirely based on aspirational. I want my life to feel like this person's looks. I want it to be beautiful. If my house was designed by this interior designer, then my life would be beautiful in the way that this person's is and I'll just buy all their stuff. Which is kind of hilarious to me because that aspirational-ness that is really
Jamie (39:21.248)
Yeah.
Destinee Day (39:48.577)
popular with the influencer, we all end up buying the same exact stuff. And we essentially just become clones.
Jamie (39:58.286)
wow. Yeah, so it almost works against itself. interesting. Wow, that's an interesting endpoint. Okay. This is, I'm glad we're talking about this. This is like helping out with my class. I'm going to make this part of my class lecture. This will be nice and easy homework. In the 1940s, everybody returned from World War II, Levittown was developed, the invention of the suburbs.
The invention of the suburbs did a really weird thing to commercialization. And I always tell people, tell students like, everything you've ever known in your entire life is really just 80 years old. All of history really doesn't apply to what you do in the current life, especially including plastics, you know? But what was interesting about Levittown in the suburb was that everything looked the same. The houses were basically stamps, the cars were stamps. So what mattered most wasn't the exterior of the house anymore, it was about the interior, what you would own that would make you different. It was that term keeping up with the Joneses.
And like the KitchenAid appliance was so interesting because it was like, that's where the colors came from. They don't have to be different colors. They still do the same thing. But the fact that you are now unique. But what you're saying is so interesting because in the age of atomization, where everything is so unique and different, conformity is the opposite. Now it's like everybody buys the same thing. the interior is the same, but the exteriors are different. And so that's a strange evolution in terms of consumerism.
That's something to think about.
Destinee Day (41:28.215)
think about it a lot like you have to have this bag. It's the specific bag in the specific color. And if you don't have that exact bag, take the Birkin, for example. That's a very extreme example. But I think it proves the point. You can't just go out and buy a Birkin from Hermes. You have to go through a thing. It doesn't matter if an influencer selling it to you or not. You still have to go through Hermes. You still have to be on a waiting list. You still have to wait a certain amount of time and spend a certain amount of money.
Jamie (41:41.131)
Mm-hmm.
Destinee Day (41:57.941)
You still want the specific color because if it's not the in season color, then you don't have the bag. It doesn't matter. It's if you go buy it from a reseller, it might be a couple of seasons old and therefore doesn't have the look that you want. Like it has to be the shoe, the thing.
And essentially then what we're all doing is buying the exact same thing, making it way easier on the companies that are selling the products. They only really have to make the one. There's not a lot of consumer choice. And so that those choices are actually being taken away from us because of the influencer marketing, because we're actually really only selling a singular.
Jamie (42:44.639)
Right. yeah. So interesting.
Destinee Day (42:48.905)
It's my turn to make it depressing this time. Usually you do it.
Jamie (42:51.647)
No, yeah, that's rough. It just makes it's like, so I always tell students that whenever they see some an influencer hawking something online, they're seeing their influencer hawking it. And when I asked my students like what their product desires are, you're right. Like they were all designing the same thing. And last fall it was the Rode cell phone case and Rode. But every semester is something different, but they're all, yeah, the cell phone case, the Rode, which I thought was interesting because it's productization of like a lip balm.
Destinee Day (43:12.225)
my gosh, yes.
Jamie (43:21.829)
And so every semester is something different, but the weird part where you just mentioned is like, it is the same thing. So now you have like 40 different influencers selling the same thing rather than 40 different products selling through one thing. Wow. Yeah. So that's an evolution. Like now we're gonna see, I think when that becomes normal.
Does that mean everybody's watching their own Texaco Star Theater? Just a different version of it and they're just buying the same thing but they think it's individual and unique because it's just different than someone else's but it's really just the same thing.
Destinee Day (43:58.583)
Yeah, a different influencer than, you know, you and I have different influencers. They're probably telling the same thing.
But you believe it because it's coming from your person and I believe it because it's coming from my person and yet we both have Rode lip gloss phone cases even though we probably don't have any use for them, you know?
Jamie (44:19.297)
Yeah, but just because it's about keeping up with the Joneses. It's about showing the glow recipe, the drunk elephant or the road case, because that's what you're showing, not the usage of it. It's the fact you've made that purchase. Well, this is, guess we're gonna go, at least here's what I, my optimistic takeaway that I always leave the students with is, at least we're gonna see the change together. All right, it's new and it's different.
But at least we're doing it together. It's not like a story we're telling in the past. It's something that we get to watch as it happens.
Destinee Day (44:51.071)
Yeah. Awesome.