Facebook Rebrands as 'Meta'

What's up with Facebook?

Facebook sits in a massive time of change, they’re facing more changes to their Ad platform, another media scandal, while they have just announced a rebrand.

It’s a precarious position in what's been an eventful past month.

What's happening to their advertising platform?

Facebook is still an advertising behemoth, but unfortunately, they’re far from the marketing superpower they were for many businesses even 12 months ago.

Apple's IOS 14 changes and even more severe pending IOS 15 updates have disrupted and crippled the advertising capabilities within their Ad platform.

CPM’s within the platform for most audience targeting are higher than ever.

High ticket and luxury products have struggled to see positive ad ROI as much of their target audience is made up of Apple product users.

As younger audiences shift to spend more time on other platforms like Tik Tok, Facebook, and even Instagram to an extent aren’t as efficient at marketing to Gen Z and younger millennials.

Facebook has also announced one of their most powerful advertising tools, the pixel will disappear at some point in 2022 as Apple and Google remove third-party tracking capabilities, this means businesses will lose the ability to easily run cross channel retargeting campaigns

On a more positive note, Facebook remains as strong as ever for businesses looking to reach older audiences 50+.

Another media scandal….

Called the Facebook files released by a former employee turned whistleblower have brought Facebook yet again under a negative spotlight.

Some of the key points released so far,

While Facebook states publicly it allows all its users to speak on equal footing, the files show Facebook has an internal program named XCheck for high profile accounts which shields them from the companies normal level of enforcement and has allowed some of the accounts in this program to post misinformation and incite violence.

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Research performed internally by Instagram has shown the company knows how detrimental its app can be for young audiences and young girls in particular. They have declined to make the research publicly available while they have also downplayed its potential negative effects to the media in the past.

The scandal has led a handful of high-profile brands and agencies including North Face and Patagonia to withhold advertising for the time being as a boycott against the company.

Facebook no more

After 17 years as Facebook, the company's corporate entity has a new name. They are now known as Meta. The name change will reflect the company's shift in vision from being a social media company to being focused on building the metaverse, think a real-life ready player one scenario.  

Facebook the social media app will still remain Facebook

It aligns with the company’s increased focus and financial push into the development of AR and VR technologies. Oculus also received a name change and will now fall under the Meta branding.

The change likely means we’ll see a further push into gaming and adopting blockchain technology and NFT’s something a number of other social networks have already announced they will do.