Happy (belated) birthday Facebook
Facebook celebrated its 10th birthday in style last month with a record set of quarterly results. With Zuckerberg and his shareholders raking in a staggering $2.34bn in advertising revenue from the social media site, 76% up from the same quarter last year, they’ve proven that Facebook’s advertising train is really gathering pace.
The rapid growth may have left some competitors like Twitter and Tumblr stalling at a signal failure, but Facebook still lags behind Google which commands a third of all digital ad spend in comparison to Facebook’s 5.7%. In reality though Google is around seven years ahead in the ad race, having launched AdWords as early as 2000, so in another seven years Facebook’s advertising revenue will be a force to be reckoned with.
It’s full steam ahead for Facebook’s advertising gravy train, but rather than blindly piling aboard, advertisers should be asking whether Facebook and other social networking sites can really get their brands to the right destination, or if they might end up being derailed entirely.
From happy beginnings to murkier endings
The growth of digital advertising isn’t the only evolution to have taken place over the past ten years; the way in which people are using social media platforms like Facebook has also transformed. Originally intended as a means of networking with fellow high-flying students, Facebook is now a site where anything and everything is shared. During the past couple in particular, the sharing of third party video content and news articles has exploded and it’s led to a cross-section of content that’s forming Facebook’s murky underbelly, content from the darker recesses of the internet being posted and shared on timelines. Violent, prejudiced or sexually explicit videos and pictures are now a frequent feature of social networking sites, bringing a whole new danger to the world of advertising.
So the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility and there are many high profile cases of where online advertising has gone badly wrong. Social networking sites are notoriously hard to regulate and vulnerable people may be exposed to a barrage of inappropriate and influential material. The influence of such content was highlighted last year through the tragic circumstances that were triggered by cyber bullying on the social networking site Ask.fm, and more recently with the case of Tallulah Wilson, whose mother called on brands to remove their adverts from sites that condoned and encouraged suicide and self-harm.
Protecting yourself from an advertising train wreck
In a time when advertising is bought and sold in a matter of milliseconds based on keywords, marketers need to be proactive in protecting their brand’s reputation and ensuring that adverts aren’t appearing in the wrong place, alongside the wrong kind of content. With newsfeeds changing every second, even the most sought after media spots could put your brand at risk by unintentionally being linked to a natural disasters, war crimes or the latest sex scandal.
Unfortunately, it’s all but impossible for social networking sites or even internet service providers to stop this from happening themselves. The sheer volume of data and content that’s shared and re-shared daily makes the internet an exciting but potentially risky business. Advertisers need to take a stand and address the issue head on.
With the right technology in place marketers can avoid ending up at the end of the line. By using specific keywords, ads can be prevented from appearing alongside damaging or inappropriate content before purchase. In doing this, advertising budgets go even further whilst ensuring that brand reputation is kept on track by avoiding collisions with some of the seediest parts of the internet.
By Andrew Goode, COO of Project Sunblock.
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