How Facebook and Friends Derailed Advertising

In the midst of all this a 39Campaign39 piece by Daniel Gilbert 39In Defence of Facebook39 appearedThis generated some comment some negative some along the lines of 39FB has made mistakes but hey they39re great really39Forgetting ad boycotts for a moment an action Daniel calls 39a silly idea39 the piece includes this memorable sentence memorable in its airbrushing of past misdemeanours quotFacebook has helped to define a new era of advertising defined by data measurability relevance and transparencyquotThe problem isData was misused in plain sight by the likes of Cambridge AnalyticaMeasurability has been marked by frequent apologies to advertisers for misleading indeed on occasions madeup audience numbersRelevance is achieved by tracking people around the web despite this being unpopular see Kantar39s Dimension work an abuse of privacy and just plain wrongTransparency although FB39s walled garden approach is hardly transparentThere was more quotMedia advertising before Facebook and Google was slow inefficient and rotten to the core with backhanders and dodgy dealsquotTo be fair he has a point on the last bit amp8211 something The Cog Blog has bored on about for years but and this is a point missed by so many of the digiterati advertising did in fact exist before online platformsBrands were built nourished and became extremely valuable without Facebook and GoogleI know FB Google Amazon and some others are great examples of massively successful businesses built online by providing services people wanted at the right momentThey39ve built ecommerce improved many buyers39 experiences provided an amazing service to those unwilling or unable to get to the shops brought a range of goods previously out of reach to us all made the vast knowledge accessible online available to all and linked families and individuals across the globeThey39ve also derailed advertisingBy obsessing over short term metrics by reducing 39a view39 down to 39a passing glance39 and by promoting these and other metrics as true indicators of brand value they39ve sent the ad business down a blind alley where the channel is seen by marketers as being far more important than the ideaTheir interaction with marketers has focused on the audience and the metrics In this environment creative ideas are an afterthought They39ve subsequently withered amp8211 to the detriment of advertising as an industryThen there39s the content By creating a usergenerated freeforall Facebook and friends have led us to a point where hate speech is easily spread and multiplied where conspiracy theories abound where anyone daring to voice an opinion is hunted down threatened abused and insulted by those holding a different opinionIt39s really not good enough to say this is a few idiots responsible for a small minority of posts It39s also not acceptable to hide behind freedom of speech As someone once said freedom of speech doesn39t give you the right to run into a crowded cinema and shout fire Editors Note It was US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes JrThis is clearly a societal problem but the consequence is that these platforms do not deliver a healthy environment for brand advertisers regardless of how many people there are on themThere are many examples of small businesses using FB and friends highly successfully as direct response channels Absolutely nothing wrong with that if the businesses concerned generate a response and if the response generates a profit then good for themBut it is wholly different for the big guys The big guys care about brands And brands are built as the great Jeremy Bullmore has it like birds builds nests from the twigs and sticks they come across along the wayOne of the sticks is the context within which brands appear After all you39re known by the company you keep amp8211 and you wouldn39t want to hang around with much of what39s on social mediaHence the boycott It really isn39t about money We all know that Facebook has a massively long tail of advertisers Even the hundreds of boycotters represent only a fraction of FB revenueWhat the boycott has done is strip away the veneer surrounding FB specifically and social media in generalThe world won39t end for the boycotting brands if they don39t advertise on Facebook I doubt their models will pick up any sort of decline in businessWhisper it quietly but the king has no clothes Facebook and friends are not a suitable place for advertising designed to build brandsThe boycott has changed advertising39s view of the social media worldI would say it has moved us all on but actually it39s made us pause rethink and resetAdvertising has a chance to regroup brand ideas have a chance to flourish as budgets are invested online as well as offline in edited contextappropriate attentiongrabbing salesgenerating mediaClick the social buttons to share this story with colleagues and friendsThe opinions expressed here are the author39s views and do not necessarily represent the views of 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How Facebook and Friends Derailed Advertising

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Brian Jacobs

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