Earlier this month, Facebook announced that it would be
making significant changes to the algorithm it uses to generate your newsfeed.
The changes will deprioritize public content from publishers and brands, and
instead prioritize postings from friends and family. Facebook hopes that the
change will bring about “more meaningful interactions” between people on the
platform. Generally, this is Facebook’s reaction to the significant negative
publicity it has received over the last year for distributing fake news to
users and having a negative impact on users’ mental health.
While this may result in happier users and better
experiences with Facebook, the company actually expects that users’ time spent
and engagement on the platform will decline. So what does this mean for
advertisers on the platform? According to Pivotal analyst Brian Wieser, “Less
time spent on the platform presumably means less inventory for advertisers to
work with, whether that’s paid or unpaid.” And of course, with less advertising
inventory available, marketers can expect to see higher prices. Brands will
simply have more competition for the available advertising inventory.
A potential positive for marketers is that more engaging
content could lead to more engaged users who would be more receptive to
advertising. Rather than quickly scrolling past article after article posted to
the newsfeed, users might be more apt to slow down, read the content from
friends and family, and perhaps engage with the ads too.
It’s also possible that this change brings some dormant
users back to the platform, somewhat canceling the negative effect on inventory.
I know that personally, over the last 6 months I have reduced my Facebook usage
from a few times a day to about once a week or less because of the poor
experience. I wanted to see friends and family and not articles and politics.
This change sounds exactly like what I’d hoped for and might be enough to get
me using the platform regularly again… and I can’t be the only one.
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