By Ben Foster, Chief Digital Officer
Mark Zuckerberg’s recent announcement removing independent fact checking and shifting to a community management has already been written about a lot and made mainstream news but it’s a policy change with such significant ramifications I feel the need to provide my opinion as well. The timing of the change so close to Trump’s re-election and close partnership with Elon Musk and therefore X is no coincidence. However, what we don’t know if whether this is a political move to ensure Meta aren’t targeted by Trump or whether Mark is jealous or Elon’s growing political power and wants to join the party.
Meta has investors and shareholders to whom Zuckerberg has a responsibility to deliver and protect profits. The policy change may be a business necessity to prevent the Trump administration from the sort of attacks which were so common against anyone not viewed as ally during his last term. Forming a partnership with Trump is especially important given that there is ongoing legal debate over a potential ban of TikTok in the USA on security grounds which Trump recently announced he wasn’t supportive of after the platform helped his re-election. If Meta can influence the decision requiring ByteDance to sell to operate in the USA or face a blanket ban it would increase their screentime share or even enable to mind blowing acquisition.
However, do Zuckerberg’s ambitions end there? As a billionaire with wealth that can buy you anything we have seen him looking for new life experiences such as MMA which would have seemed very out of character historically. He will have seen how Elon Musk used X as a platform to push his personal views including the use of fake news to smear those with different opinions. Initially the world couldn’t understand why Elon was imploding the reputation of his $44bn investment with dictatorial behaviours now his approach makes much more sense that he has the ear of the most powerful political leader on the planet. Will Zuckerberg follow suit? Would investors allow him?
That outlines the motivations and possible directions of travel but what does this all mean for advertisers? Pessimists would look at X becoming a highly toxic environment and predict Meta newsfeeds could follow a similar downward spiral. However, the more likely scenario is while there will be pockets of unsavoury content, Meta need to protect their advertising income and therefore won’t allow the platform to become a cesspit like Twitter. Platforms focussed on more positive content either from regulation or user behaviour, could benefit from increased usage. The likes of TikTok, Snapchat and Weare8 are likely to dial up what differentiates their user experience and target content creators from Instagram who will be concerned about negative association.
So, what should Meta advertisers do? For now the reality is that this is a watching brief. Meta is the bedrock of many digital media plans, so to take action would jeopardise a large proportion of acquisition activity; however, following set-up best practices is more paramount than ever. It will be interesting to see how targeting and exclusion options available evolve. In recent times targeting methodologies have been diminishing with Zuckerberg openly stating the desire to become increasingly automated and AI driven but if a blackbox approach with brand safety concerns jeopardises advertiser spend then some concessions will be made. For example we might see the same technology deployed in programmatic display for years (e.g. DoubleVerify & IAS) become a fully integrated option within Meta rather than the token light touch functionality provided currently.