Ad: Phaidon Books
Targeted: Yes
It's finally time to explore one of the apps that I think is most accurate when targeting advertisements at me: Instagram. Insta gets a bad name for being full of 'influencers' that advertise an unattainable lifestyle, but those aren't the kinds of accounts I follow - my feed is full of friends and artists.
There's two parts of Instagram where I expect to see ads: the home feed and in between 'stories' (that's those little circles at the top of the screen, for those of you who aren't familiar with the app. Today I'm focusing on the home page and it didn't take long to find an ad - there was one immediately following the top post.
The advert is for Phaidon, a British publisher of art books. They're a company I hadn't heard of until they first appeared on my Insta feed this morning but the feel of their ad is that they're a high-end publisher of those big expensive coffee table books you see in the Fashion section of Waterstones but definitely can't afford. This is the most sure I've been so far that an ad is targeted to me, as I spent yesterday evening reading about Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (who was a renowned photographer) and as of this morning the app is trying to sell me books of photography.
The actual advert here is not for Mapplethorpe (but they do sell two books of his photos) but is actually there to inform me that they have a sale on. I was intrigued by the Rihanna book you see above, which is the first of four pages on the ad; the other screens showed books about nature and animals. One thing I did notice is that they are prominently displaying the discount, but not the actual price. Apprehensively I clicked to have a look at the website and find out what the cost is.
I was unsurprised to find that their 'sale' books are mostly retailing at between £50-£100. Scrolling through, I didn't see anything I was interested enough to spend that sort of money on, although I did see some things going for £15-£25. After ruling out the sale section, I moved on to the full-price books - first art, which featured the £125 Mapplethorpe anthologies and also what is probably their most expensive item:
Now, I like Rihanna as much as the next girl, but anyone who has £5175 to spend on a book has too much money! In the fashion section, a couple of things caught my eye: first, a book about 70s punk posters and press, and then a book called 'Gothic & Lolita' showing Japanese street fashion pictures.
At £19.95 this is much cheaper than the Rihanna offerings but even still, I always have an eye out for a bargain so I went for a browse online to see if I could find a cheaper copy. eBay was a contender and so was Amazon, but Abebooks won out with a Used copy retailing for £2 (plus £3.10 postage).
The listing says there's some wear to the cover but that the inside pages look new. At a quarter of the price of a new copy from the publisher I'm willing to go for it, so I placed an order and waited for it to arrive...
It came pretty quickly but the package was open, which was a little weird. Luckily, the book was inside. It's in great condition and from first glance, the pictures inside look really good quality and fascinating - I can't wait to use it as inspiration for some sketches. My only complaint is that the lettering on the spine is upside down so it's going to look unsatisfying on my shelf.
If I come across any more cool Phaidon books in secondhand shops I'd definitely be tempted to pick them up and display them on my coffee table. I still won't be dropping £5k on a book though.
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