How can brands adapt spend to a Facebook boycott?

Hannah Johnson looks at how the long tail of small to medium-sized businesses can evolve their advertising strategies to reach consumers outside of the social media platform

The Facebook ad boycott that began less than two weeks ago picked up steam over the weekend. It’s now grown from an estimated seven figure to eight figure loss of revenue for Facebook, with Verizon, Unilever, Starbucks and Coca-Cola joining in.

There’s an argument that it’s still a drop in the ocean for Facebook which has an estimated network of 8m advertisers and an annual income of around $70bn.

It’s also been noted that it’s easier for high profile brands to take a stand that could lead to a small sales hit in July, when they may have already been looking to cut costs due to Coronavirus.

However, it’s much trickier for the long tail of small to medium-sized businesses that make up the majority of Facebook’s revenue. A dip in sales or income for these firms when they’re already impacted by Cv-19 could be untenable.

So what can brands and broader organisations do outside of the channel?

Facebook has the highest reach of any channel globally, which can make it tricky to work around. However, YouTube and Google come in close behind and, when combined, offer the opportunity to reach customers at both the discovery (search) and consideration (watching video) stage in the cycle.

YouTube/Google also offer a more mature audience targeting, retargeting and potential conversion model than some of their closer competitors such as Twitter or Snapchat due to their multitude of formats and options. Brands can reach broad audiences with Google Display Network (GDN) and then start to narrow down their outreach based on searches, interests and video views to build repeat interactions.

Consider gaming

Gaming is no longer a niche, with global mobile game downloads up 30% in March. Beyond partnerships and in-app advertising, the potential for mobile game advertising still hasn’t quite met its potential.

Gaming, in its multitude of incarnations and audiences, offers a scale and sustained user engagement unlike any other platform. Considering the role it could play in engagement and conversion means it may be worth a look at in-game advertising network solutions such as Adinmo.

Networks with fast growing young audiences are becoming contenders

TikTok, the darling of the fun lockdown video trend, continues to see a high growth in users with over 800m now actively logging in each month. Whilst its biddable ad platform model is in its infancy (it launched in May) it may be worth considering paid partnerships to test outcome and responses from users.

This would also provide a potential roadmap for how the platform could scale and become part of media plans as the year progresses.

We need to remember this isn’t exclusively a Facebook-only problem.

A boycott of Facebook also becomes a boycott of businesses they own – over 50 at last count, including Instagram and WhatsApp – so it has the potential to impact a large share of social media advertising.

Encouraging platforms to do better doesn’t just stop at Facebook. YouTube still comes under fire for the time it takes to remove offensive content. And while Twitter has started labelling tweets, it’s another platform that faces large ongoing issues with misinformation and trolling.

Treading the line between campaigning for change and maintaining impact.

For some charities in the UK and globally, Facebook is the most effective acquisition channel for new donors and income. At a time when many have seen revenues dwindle, it’s crucial they’re able to recover and stabilise income as soon as they can.

So, for now, it feels like this is a corporate trend. As it continues to scale it has the potential to create genuine change that could benefit smaller and non-for-profit organisations who still need to turn to the channel in July as they seek a return to normality.

And, with shareholders becoming nervous and the overall boycott revenue figure growing daily, it may be we don’t have to wait long to find out what’s next.

Hannah Johnson is MD London at Blue State