Does Instagram Listen to Your Private Conversations to Help Choose Ad Content?

Gayle King asked a question that many people want to know the answer to…does Instagram’s app listen to conversations to help with ad placement.

Gayle interviewed Instagram chief Adam Mosseri on CBS This Morning and asked, “Can you help me understand how I can be having a private conversation with someone about something I’m interested in seeing or buying… and an advertisement for that will pop up on my Instagram feed?”

Gayle continued, “I haven’t searched for it, I haven’t talked to anybody about it. I swear I think you guys are listening. I know you’re gonna say you’re not.”

“There are two ways that can happen. One is dumb luck, which can happen,” Adam responded. “The second is you might be talking about something because it’s top of mind because you’ve been interacting with that type of content more recently.”

He continued, “So maybe you’re really into food and restaurants. You saw a restaurant on Facebook or Instagram and you really like the thing. It’s top of mind, maybe it’s subconscious and then it bubbles up later. I think this kind of thing happens often in a way that’s really subtle.”

And finally, he added one last time, “But we don’t look at your messages, we don’t listen in on your microphone. Doing so would be super problematic for a lot of different reasons. But I recognize you’re not going to really believe me.”