Instagram proudly highlights how limited organic reach has become

When announcing a new product, it make sense to include testimonials from customers who rave about how it’s exactly what they need in these new and exciting times. What make less sense, however, is to simultaneously highlight a quote from one of those same customers belittling your core offering. 

But hey, Facebook-owned Instagram has always been a trendsetter that loves to go its own way. It once again reminded us of this fact with a June 4 blog post trumpeting the ability for brands to promote influencers’ sponsored posts that just so happened to include some perhaps unintentional shade. 

The damaging quote, presented in bold and oversized font, comes from the vice president of brand communications at Old Navy and emphasizes the fact that organic reach on the platform — i.e. the ability for people to see your posts without you having to first pay to promote said posts — is mostly a thing of the past. 

“We’ve long seen that customers want to discover fashion through trusted sources who have credibility,” explains Liat Weingarten in what is clearly meant to be pitch for Instagram’s latest offering, “but organic reach on that content has become increasingly limited.”

Weingarten continues that Old Navy is “consistently looking for more sophisticated ways like Branded Content ads to serve partner content to the right shoppers, instead of just throwing it into the social ether.” 

Yup, you read that correctly. Likely due — at least in part — to Instagram’s widely despised algorithm, non-paid Old Navy posts relying on organic reach are akin to chucking some ad copy into the ether. 

This isn’t surprising. What is surprising, however, is that Instagram would choose to proudly highlight such an assertion on its own blog. 

Buy hey, self-awareness has never exactly been the calling card of anything helmed by Mark Zuckerberg.