Facebook is putting it’s foot down. When everything is falling into place like it is, you can do that. To start, Facebook changes it’s ad game.
Facebook leaders let it be known that marketers will have to buy ad space before they reach customers. Effective January 2015, they will change marketers’ post rankings to reduce the number of advertisements fed to around 1.35 billion news feeds around the world. The message seems to be clear: less advertising postings, more buying real ads. If advertisers were smart, they would take heed without complaint. Nearly 20% of the world’s population has a Facebook page. One person’s news feed can see anywhere from 1,500-15,000 new items a day. According to their own research, business ad/marketing posts are the last thing people want to see in their news feed. Brian Boland, Facebook’s Vice President of marketing ad products, said hundreds of thousands have complained about too many promotional posts. On the other hand, Facebook has worked ceaselessly to promote it’s paid advertising plans. One tactic is a pop-up ad that comes on Facebook mobile. In Q3 2014 alone, the demand from advertisers was so great Facebook made nearly $3 billion…in just that quarter!
I think Facebook is doing this for both reasons. One is to respond to customer complaints of being flooded by advertising posts. The second is to add even more to their ad revenue by virtually forcing marketers to pay for ad space. The first reason is more honorable than the second, but I see why the second reason is sufficient. I can see why small businesses with limited budgets would want to use ad postings to get their business out. Facebook is a good tool and I think they should go easy on them. But for mega corporations worth billions…come on! Pony up and pay for for the ad space. If they can afford to give major bonuses to their CEOs, they can afford to pay for advertising. So why shouldn’t they?