This Social Network Is Most Successful at Separating You From Your Money

pcmag.com:

The internet has brought us so many things—and that includes the myriad new ways companies can shill their products to the consuming public. AI analytics company Unsupervised conducted a survey of a little over 1,000 people in the US to find out how we’re perceiving advertising these days—which ads are palatable, which aren’t, and why. 

First, on which platforms do we trust ads the most? Newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV took the top four trusted spots. Digital ad platforms congregated closer to the bottom of the list, though. Instagram hit fifth place. Next came billboards, which beat out Spotify, TikTok, YouTube, and podcasts, respectively. On the “where are the worst ads” list, YouTube leads the pack, with TV in second place. 

Now for the good news (for digital advertisers, that is): Survey respondents named Instagram as the platform with the ads that most make them want to spend their money. Insta also inspires the priciest purchases, at an average of $300 per. Facebook came second, with the second-most-expensive average buys ($225). 

So what makes someone like an ad? Most respondents said “relatable” ads were their favorites (43%). Forty percent prefer ads from a preferred brand; and informative ads garnered 38%. A more fun question, though, is what makes a terrible ad? The number-one bad-ad quality, which kind of surprised me—celebrity endorsement. (We definitely need better celebrities.) 

One generational finding: When the surveyed group was asked how well they liked personalized ads, the answers were split among age groups. Gen Z likes them a lot, at 81%; millennials, markedly less, at 57%; Gen X is lukewarm, at 51%; and boomers are definitely meh, at 43%. 

Finally, looking to the future of advertising,