Why Facebook has become the impossible break-up
Facebook may not be attracting younger users in the same way it hooked in their parents, but Dan Monheit argues those people who are on it are now so reliant it’s hard to leave.
Yesterday, Facebook showed me six memories ‘from this day’. It also reminded me about three birthdays and two upcoming events.
All helpful. All not so subtle reminders of why I can never leave.
Sure, we hear rumblings about Facebook’s numbers dwindling and new platforms coming and going, but none of it really matters. Not when I, like the 15 million other monthly active users (11 million daily), am consistently, passively (aggressively) reminded, that breaking up with Facebook is near on impossible.
We know that Facebook has long filled a void in our lives formerly known as ‘boredom’. We also know it’s become the highly addictive, personalised, 24/7 news source for millions of us.
… our personal details
… copyright to all the photos we posted
… the right to use our name
… the list goes on
This is a typical op-ed mess by a media channel specialist (social media in this case) advocating their channel of specialism without any useful data or insight into changing behaviour or marketing outcomes.
Tomorrow.. Sponsorship Activation Strategist outlines that sponsorship activation is really important, under appreciated and not understood by anyone. Especially professors or agnostic marketing types.
Is Facebook a critical part of the average users life today?
Maybe, for a very tiny proportion of the user base. I would suggest that for the vast bulk of the audience, it is a more “casual” usage scenario, where advertising content is viewed as a necessary evil getting between them and pictures of their family and friends.
Is it a useful way of sharing/distributing content and generating comments? Absolutely, but most businesses will probably have to pay for the privilege as organic reach is now very, very poor.
Hi Sam G,
Not sure how you missed it but the data I provided is that in Australia, Facebook has 11 million daily active users. If you’re in the business of selling something, there’s a pretty good chance some of your customers are in that 11 million.
There’s plenty of data floating around about time spent on the platform, views per day etc but if the 11 million highly segmentable, affordably reachable sets of eyeballs doesn’t get you, I don’t think the other stuff will make much difference.
With regard to changing marketing outcomes, my suggestion (contained within the very same article) is that marketers invest their time (not just their budgets) in truly understanding how the platform works to get the most out of it (read: use it to sell more stuff).
I hope that helps. Looking forward to learning more about sponsorship activation tomorrow.
Facebook is just the new yellow pages. Once you get that you realise what an appalling advertising medium it is. Click-throughs on an ad 1 in 1000. The worst conversion rate period.
As an ‘agnostic’ ad exec I have to disagree. I remain a believer in the awesome branding power of TV, the relevance of OOH, radio, and physical DM etc. But our agency also does a lot of digital, across lots of formats. And what I’m consistently seeing is Facebook out-performing regular programmatic, display, mobile on CTR, CPC and ROI. For our audiences anyway.
Remarkably, Facebook reaches 15 million Australians a month. Even more remarkably, TV reaches 16 million Australians A DAY.
Facebook has many great qualities, not least its beautiful synergies with TV for advertisers. But when it comes to reach, scale, ROI, brand safety, measurability and reliability, TV remains unbeatable.
Great to see that Facebook spent heavily on TV advertising for its Facebook Live campaign too.
http://www.adweek.com/news/adv.....ore-174176
Well done Dan for a common sense piece challenging and encouraging marketers. Indeed, you’re quite right about the power of Facebook as a channel and many marketers ought to move beyond ticking the box by running basic campaigns and instead investing time to learn the platform which will pay off in the long run. Or, alternately, have someone (agency or publisher partner) who knows Facebook do it on their behalf.
Retargeting with dynamic content based on the audiences visiting specific pages of a clients site is one example that’s a little time consuming but relatively inexpensive at driving strong results.
I think the beauty of Facebook centers around how easy to use it is, both as a regular user and as an advertiser. I tried google ads in the past, but Facebook is undoubtedly much easier to use. Also, as a regular user, it’s rather addictive and so easy to use you don’t even realize you are already in there. Somehow, it has become part of our daily lives, and even if younger generations are not signing up as before, I think Facebook is so big, they are not too worried about it.
Great articel guys, keep up the good work!
Where are you getting these monthly and daily active users numbers? They are hilariously low. You really think only 15 million of the 200 million Facebook users in the United States are active on a daily basis? Try 150 million, buddy.