Advertising on social media is big business. In 2023, the sector is projected to reach more than $207 billion, so, with that much money on the line, it’s not surprising that it’s effective. It’s a common occurrence to be scrolling through social media when you see an advertisement and think, “Huh. I guess I could use that.” And before you know it, you’re clicking the link to buy it.

Matthew Pittman is an assistant professor of advertising at the University of Tennessee. He studies what goes on between that initial “Huh” and the eventual purchase. He joined Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal to talk about what makes us so susceptible to those ads, and his own unfortunate social media purchases. A transcript of their conversation is below and has been edited for clarity.

Kai Ryssdal: I need you to start by telling me the story of how you wound up buying personalized Lego figurines of yourself and your wife.

Matthew Pittman: So it was certainly not on purpose, I can promise you that. I’m browsing social media…

Ryssdal: Did it just happen? No, I’m sorry. Go ahead.

Pittman: I’m scrolling through social media, as we all do, and I saw an ad. It wasn’t the first time it got me, I think it was the second or third time when each time I saw it, it seemed like progressively a better and better idea. Like, you know what, my anniversary is coming up. My wife would love personalized Lego figurines of ourselves.

Ryssdal: I’m sorry to laugh. That’s an all-timer story, I gotta tell you. But look, you’re a trained professional. And yet you found yourself in the morass of advertising while on social media. And that while on social media thing is key here. What does it do to our brains while we scroll and try to make decisions?

Pittman: With this, I noticed that the things that seemed like a good idea in the moment, then later, when those things arrive in the mail or when you see an ad based on something you clicked on, there’s a little tinge of regret, like, “Why did I do that? Why am I seeing this right now?” So I wanted to explore that phenomenon and figure out why we click the things we click.

Ryssdal: Okay. It’s a mystery of current life: Why do we click the things we click?

Pittman: So part of the problem is that, in the past, we’ve studied social media ads as if they’re just like a billboard, or a print magazine ad, or even a television ad, when they’re not. It’s dynamic, it’s multimedia, it’s changing, and you’re seeing an ad from any number of sources right after you might see a video or a post from your ex from high school or a new celebrity training fitness routine. Evaluating all those different sources takes up mental resources. And so it depletes our ability to think reasonably, rationally about these things. And then when we see an ad for a Lego set, or a manny pack, which is what I also purchased online, which is a fanny pack painted like a man’s hairy belly. The third time we see an ad for that we say, “Ah, seems like a good idea, I could probably find a use for that. Let me go ahead and buy.”

Ryssdal: OK, I want to come back to all of that stuff. But we’ll do that at the end. I do have to ask, though. We see advertisements not just for manny packs on social media, but we see, let’s say, financial advertisements, we see political advertisements, we see all kinds of things that are of more important than quick spur-of-the-moment purchases.

Pittman: Right. So one caveat of this research is it doesn’t necessarily overpower all of our self-determination, self-will, agency. When you’re involved with the product, then you put forth the effort to rationally think about it, even if you’re mentally depleted or have that kind of mental fog. So presumably, when you see an ad for an upcoming election, hopefully you’re bringing your mental resources to bear and you’re not as swayed as you are with kind of low involvement purchases — like manny packs or personalized Legos.

Ryssdal: So the obvious solutions journalism question here is, what are we supposed to do? And the answer probably is to just take a beat, don’t act right away or leave something in your shopping cart. But my guess would be that the immediacy of social media means that you don’t actually take a beat and you act because it’s right there and you’re cognitively overloaded, right?

Pittman: So there’s those little tactics we can use in the short term to help us, but, long term, I think media literacy and being more deliberate with our media use is a helpful goal. And sometimes I can manage this, but not all the time. But before I open up an app, I ask myself, “What do I hope to accomplish with this 10-second or 10-minute TikTok session?” If I’m looking for information, sports updates, whatever, then setting those goals beforehand can help us align goals and motivations.

Ryssdal: Yeah. OK, so how did the figurines go over with your wife? That’s what I don’t want to know. Forget the manny pack. The figurines that were late for your anniversary. How’d that go?

Pittman: The figurines showing up two weeks late was already one strike against me because there was some build-up anticipation. But it did not live up to the anniversary hype that I had built it to be in my own mind.