Many marketers in 2020 have begun to rely on Facebook Inc’s incredible ability to drive highly engaged and targeted traffic to advertisers’ digital properties. Facebook promises a vast majority of adult internet users who spend upward of 25 minutes per day on their properties.

Many DTC businesses have been built off of the fairly cheap and good-quality traffic they’ve gotten via Facebook ads.

However, with the rise of social justice movements, Facebook has been criticized for not doing enough to protect minorities and other folks from hate speech and online vitriol.

Politics

• FB is looking at banning political advertising – this would result in a loss of $100-200 million but not significant in Facebook’s grand scheme of revenue; interestingly, this isn’t something the boycott advertisers have been emphasizing but this is probably due to the stain left on FB’s rep from the Cambridge Analytica scandal
• France has banned political advertising altogether on Facebook and other platforms – other governments may choose to do the same with some jurisdictions not allowing advertising

Consumer Attitudes on Stop Hate for Profit

• 39% weren’t aware
• 29% weren’t sure
• 18% approved of the boycott
• 12% disapproved
• People who self-identified as liberal felt more positive about brands who were boycotting vs conservatives were less likely to feel positive about brands who participated in the boycott
• Young people were more likely to know about the boycott

Where are those dollars going instead of Facebook?

Brands on the record

• VF Corp (holding company for a number of brands including Vans, Timberland, The North Face and Jansport)
  • Jansport is shifting the launch of their Back to School campaign to YouTube, Tiktok
  • The North Face is looking to spend more on Pinterest and Tiktok
• Eddie Bauer redirecting to Google, Gmail, Tiktok, Snapchat
• Eileen Fisher – CTV, Roku, Hulu
• Some brands are pocketing savings due to the economic troubles that COVID-10 has brought along
• Interesting that YouTube was mentioned as a Facebook alternative – they have been embroiled with many ad scandals themselves

Big questions

• Oppenheimer (bank) projects ad losses ranging from $150 -250 million – which is under 0.01%
• If all top advertisers moved away it would only account for 1% of their revenues
• Almost makes sense that FB isn’t doing more
• What will happen on August 1^st?

What does Facebook need to do to continue to grow – much of their growth is from digital endemic ads, if they want to grow they’re going to have to pull budgets from large advertisers who still invest more in TV

You can listen to the podcast here.

What do you think the long-term effects of the Facebook boycott will be?

2013