It wasn’t long ago that we were all hearing about Facebook’s advertising troubles, and before that there was so much excitement about Facebook’s new advertising methods. In the minds of advertisers, Facebook seems to just glide from good to bad, like a giant social media swing. Though, if it were a swing, it would have slowed down and come to a stop by now. So, I guess you could say it’s more like Isaac Newton’s swinging pendulums, for now there has been reports that Facebook has quite possible swung toward the bad once more, which is no surprise to anyone.
Since people started to question Facebook, with their IPO thing and reported advertising flaws, they’ve also started keeping track of their progress. Even though most were completely unhappy with Facebook for a while, there was still faith that they would pull through eventually, because that’s what Facebook does. However, 33across gives us some information that might just point in the opposite direction. The study seems to imply that advertisers do not have quite as much confidence in Facebook as they do the rest of the web, or at least that is what it seems to show.
The information in the chart shows percentages in response to the question, “When thinking about Facebook versus the rest of the web, which gets more of your team’s attention?” The results were as follows, in the format of Facebook:Rest of the Web;
4% say 80:20, 11% say 60:40, 4% say 50:50, 11% say 40:60, and a gigantic 71% say 20:80, all of which was recorded for June 2012. By looking at the chart, you can see the significant differences from data that was recorded in March of this year. It just so happens that it was between these months that Facebook’s advertising blunders took place.
Although things are looking rough for Facebook in the chart, there’s no evidence that says Facebook’s impending downfall is the only reason for these results. How do we know that the rest of the web isn’t just getting better? Well, the fact is, the rest of the web is growing quite significantly, with new advertising solutions and marketing techniques being released almost daily. Sure, Facebook was exciting for a while, but there are other things for advertisers to focus on, most of which could benefit their business more than Facebook ever has or will.
There are a lot of people who, when they think of advertising, they think of Facebook, because it’s the biggest name out there right now. However, people use Google, and Youtube, and Twitter a lot too. If you combine the usage of these three sites, the number is far higher than Facebook’s user numbers, meaning that it is worth advertising in other places and not putting all of your focus on Facebook. Sure, Facebook is an ideal place to advertise, even with all of its flaws, and it would probably get your advertisements a lot of views. However, Facebook has shown that it may not be as good with ads as we originally thought, so maybe advertisers should get their attention away from the spotlight and look at the rest of the stage.
