California: Photo-sharing application Instagram is testing a feature called ‘ad break’ that will stop users while scrolling and show an ad.
Matthew Tye, a spokesperson for Meta’s sub-platform, confirmed the news about the feature trial, saying the company will update if the trial results in any changes to the app.
A user of the social networking platform Reddit spotted the feature being offered for testing while scrolling through Instagram.
In the Read It post, the user said that after scrolling for a certain period of time, Instagram stops users from scrolling further and the cycle resumes after viewing the ad.
In the screenshot provided, it can be seen that Instagram offers an ad break with a countdown that indicates how long the user will be able to resume scrolling.
It should be noted that Instagram’s sponsored posts are already appearing in between content, but the inevitable ads between posts will add to the scrolling disruption.
(function(d, s, id){
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;}
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3&appId=770767426360150”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));
(function(d, s, id) {
var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];
if (d.getElementById(id)) return;
js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;
js.src = “//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.7”;
fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);
}(document, ‘script’, ‘facebook-jssdk’));