Instagram, the Meta-owned social media platform, is testing a new feature that will show ‘unskippable’ ads when users are scrolling through their feeds. Dubbed ‘Ad Breaks’, Meta seems to be currently rolling out the experimental change to a small group of users. While the company hasn’t officially said anything about ‘Ad Breaks’, it looks like the social media platform is forcing some users to watch three to five seconds of unskippable ads before they can resume scrolling. Got the Instagram “ad break” again & this time I clicked the info button to see their explanation So abusive to their users to do this pic.twitter.com/BrzndbSvNk — Dan Levy ✡ דניאל לוי (@TheDanLevy) June 1, 2024 When one user clicked on the ‘i’ button to see what Ad Breaks does, the official description says, “Ad breaks are a new way of seeing ads on Instagram. Sometimes you may need to view an ad before you can keep browsing.” Unsurprisingly, the new functionality seems to be causing frustration among users, with many saying they will stop using Instagram if the platform decides to stick with the changes. It looks like Meta is testing the water and gauging user feedback before it rolls out the functionality to everyone. YouTube also shows unskippable ads on the free tier, with some ads lasting up to a minute. While those ads can be easily disabled by purchasing YouTube Premium, it is still unclear if Meta will roll out an ad-free subscription if it rolls out unskippable ads to everyone. Last month, Instagram introduced ‘Add Yours Music’ and ‘Reveal’ stickers and a new feature called ‘Frames’, and said it is making Notes more interactive by adding support for likes, mentions, and prompts.
