Is Facebook Screwing over Business Advertisers?

Jeannie Page
Via on Dec 21, 2011

We are all too familiar with the constant and often frustrating changes that Facebook makes to their format and their policies. You login one day and suddenly everything has changed; there was no warning, often times there was no explanation. You begin the time-consuming task of relearning the new structure, often only with the help of friendly posts sent around by friends who are a step ahead of you in the learning curve. And often times you’ll see rumors going around: rumors about Facebook policy changes that may or may not be true.

One such rumor began circling just prior to November 1st. The rumor was directed at Business Page administrators. The rumor stated that if fans of your business page had not interacted with your page in the previous week (I believe this timeframe was a guess), that that fan would cease from getting your feeds in the future. Of course many page owners were angered and panicked by this suggestion; would we still be able to reach our fans, would our advertising dollars have been flushed straight down the toilet?

As someone who likes to do my research and learn the actual facts, I began searching through the Facebook forums trying to either corroborate or debunk this rumor. Now anyone who has ever attempted the arduous task of navigating around the Facebook help forums, knows that this is a daunting proposition. At best it is searching for a needle in a haystack. At worst, you find absolutely no answers, and of course there is no way to contact a “person” at Facebook. Facebook’s customer support (that’s a joke!) is simply put, a big black hole.

After hours of searching around the forums, and of course having no luck, I took to the trusted Google search. I could find nothing. Since that time, I have attempted to do my own analysis to find out what is really going on with Facebook page stats. I began asking my friends and my fans and low and behold, I discovered that the rumor did in fact appear to be true. Friends began telling me that they had not been receiving my fan page feeds in weeks now, in some cases over a month. I began surveying other business page owners and it was the same story everywhere. Everyone was scrambling trying to figure out how they could reach those fans that had suddenly fallen into the same black hole. There was no way.

As a business page administrator, there is no way to “send a message” to all of your fans at once. We used to have this ability. It was taken away. Then we could simply reach our fans by posting a status update. But now it seems that that is only reaching fans who have interacted with our page in some undetermined, “secret” amount of time, an algorithm that seems to be undisclosed and well-guarded by Facebook.

Business owners everywhere are extremely angered and frustrated by this change to our Business Pages. But in my view there is an even bigger injustice taking place here: many of these same business owners have paid hundreds, even thousands of dollars on targeted Facebook advertising. I have raved to my peers about how valuable Facebook advertising is; rather than posting a generic billboard on a freeway, where you have no idea who you are targeting, Facebook gives you the ability to target exactly the demographic you seek to attract, those people who share the same interests that you are promoting. As far as internet advertising goes, it was brilliant. I was definitely on board. And it worked. As a result of a targeted Facebook advertising campaign, as well as my own viral marketing efforts, I have managed to gain over 25,000 fans in only six months. And I was very happy about this. That is until I stopped being able to reach those fans.

Now if I look at my Facebook Insights, at best only about 10% of my fans are receiving my feeds. Now I fully recognize that this is partly impacted by who is logging in when, how far down in one’s feed your update falls, and whether or not they are actually seeing it. I get that, and that is not what I’m talking about. I also get that fans have the right to opt out of your feeds, and that internet norms requires fans to have that option. I understand that fact as well, and am also not referring to those people. I have now surveyed dozens of friends and fans, all of whom have verified to me that they did not block my feeds, as well as dozens of business page administrators and the answers are all the same: even when scrolling back through days and days of old feeds, many of our fans are no longer receiving our updates at all.

I tested this theory by having those same fans (who are no longer receiving my updates) go back to my page and interact with it in some way: either by liking or commenting on an update. My theory was that once they interacted with the page again, they would resume getting my updates. This proved to be true. But now the question is, for how long will they continue to receive my updates? I’m sure that this same undisclosed algorithm of Facebook will still be in effect; I’m guessing that if these same fans do not interact with my page within some set amount of time, they will again cease to receive my updates.

Business owners are angry. Advertisers are even more angry, and rightfully so. It certainly does not seem right or ethical business practice that business owners and those of us who have spent substantial amounts of money on advertising, should not be able to access those same fans who still wish to be receiving our updates. I am calling on Facebook to address this issue immediately.

UPDATE- December 22, 2011

Today I received this information from a writer at TechCrunch, shedding some light on the Facebook algorithm:

“Facebook uses an algorithm called EdgeRank to determine what you see in the news feed out of all the updates from your friends and Pages you Like. Your closest friends and the Pages you interact with most get shown more prominently. However, a Page’s update’s EdgeRank is heavily influenced by the quantity of Likes and comments it receives.

If one of your updates gets a very high percentage of users who see it Liking or commenting on it, it will be more likely to appear to the rest of your fans — even if they haven’t interacted with your Page recently. There is no “expiration date” or “time limit” within which users must have interacted with your Page to see your updates, though their interaction with your Page does influence how likely they are to see your updates.”

So what this means to me is that my assumption is correct that Facebook is controlling who gets what business page updates, and Facebook is making this choice for us, the users.  This writer states there is no “expiration date” or “time limit” as my experiments suggested, however he does state of users that “their interaction with your Page does influence how likely they are to see your updates.” So this basically confirms exactly what I wrote above: that if a user is not interacting regularly with your page, they are more likely to stop receiving your feeds. As I mentioned previously, I ran this experiment with dozens of fans and fan pages and the result was the same in all cases. Those fans who had not interacted regularly did confirm for me that they were no longer receiving my feeds. And once I had them go back to my page and interact with it anew, they immediately began receiving my feeds again. So my conclusions are still the same:

1. Facebook is making choices for users and even if a user has not “unliked” a page or opted out of its feed, they may still stop receiving that page’s feeds. Users have “liked” a page because they chose to be there. They should not be having this choice made for them.

2. Many users simply like to read posts, to keep up to date about what a business is doing. They do not necessarily want or need to be interacting with posts, liking or commenting. This does not mean that they do not still wish to receive these feeds. Again, I would argue that because the users do have the tools to make this choice if they so choose, Facebook should not be forcing this choice on users.

3. Advertisers are the reason that Facebook still exists as a business. I am one of I’m sure thousands (if not millions) of advertisers who I’m sure all told have paid millions, if not billions of dollars in advertising. We did not pay to acquire fans only to not be able to reach them. Seriously. Think about this. Why would any advertiser spend money on an ad, if they knew they would have no way at all of reaching those fans later? They wouldn’t. We understand as advertisers that we run the risk of users choosing to opt out of our feeds or unlike our page. That is the risk we take as advertisers, and I accept that. But it is not inherent in that risk that Facebook should STOP displaying our feeds to our fans who are still choosing to be there. Even worse many of us had paid for advertising long before these new changes (EdgeRank) were made. I do not think it is right that suddenly I am no longer able to reach fans that I had been reaching for months. I strongly believe that Facebook needs to be held accountable to their paying advertisers. To prevent business pages and advertisers from being able to access their fans is very poor business practice and I believe unethical, at best.

Again, I am calling on Facebook to please address this issue and to answer these questions: Of what benefit is it to Facebook to prevent business pages and advertisers from reaching fans that have chosen to be there? Why does Facebook want to undermine and anger the very business owners who are keeping them in business?

Incorrect source, offensive, or found a typo? Or do you want to write for Elephant?

Jeannie Page

Jeannie Page is a reformed .com management professional who has made a dramatic shift in her life, a shift to follow her bliss and to get into alignment in order to be a force for good in the world. Martha Stewart’s Blogger of the Month in Whole Living Magazine, Jeannie is also the founder of The Yoga Diaries and also maintains her own blog The Awakened Life. Jeannie, and details about her current book project, can be found on Facebook here and on Twitter at @jeannienpage. Jeannie's Spanish Facebook page can be found here. Jeannie is also the Spanish Language Editor for Elephant Journal. Click here for the Elephant Journal en Español Facebook page. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeannie Page es una profesional de gestión reformada quien ha hecho un gran cambio en su vida, un cambio para seguir a su felicidad, para entrar en la alineación y ser una fuerza del bien en el mundo. Ella mantiene un Blog a Despertando a la Vida. Jeannie, y detalles sobre su proyecto de libro actual, se pueden encontrar en Facebook aquí y en Twitter a @JeanniePageES. Jeannie también es la Editora del Idioma Española para Elephant Journal. Haga clic aquí para la página de Facebook de Elephant Journal en Español.

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14 Responses to “Is Facebook Screwing over Business Advertisers?”

  1. ilona says:
    December 21, 2011 at 13:06

    Thanks for taking the time to do the research and write this article; I've noticed the same thing with my mosaic art fan page. Very disappointing, not to mention deceptive. I hope that if enough people complain, Facebook will change it.

    Reply
    • theawakenedlife says:
      December 21, 2011 at 13:15

      Thanks Ilona. I am hoping so as well, which is why I felt compelled to write this. Please spread the word. I just received this message via a friend of a friend, from a guy who is an engineer for Facebook pages:

      "Pages distribution is up since the recent feed launch. Paying for ads doesn't guarantee feed distribution. I'd suggest they look at page insights and produce more of the more engaging content."

      There are several problems with this response:

      1. It is does not address the problem/rumor I have brought to light: that fans who have NOT opted out, nor unliked a page are still not receiving feeds.

      2. If there is some algorithm which states that users will automatically default to NOT receiving feeds, after some period of time without interacting with a page, then it is irrelevant how engaging my content is- they are not receiving it either way.

      3. If a fan chooses to no longer receive my content, they have the option to either "unlike" my page, or to block my feeds. If a fan does NOT pro-actively take one of those 2 actions, they should not simply stop receiving my feeds. If they "liked" my page to begin with, it is because they wanted to receive my feeds.

      4. Whether a business page has paid for advertising or not, if a fan has chosen to go to that page and "like" it, then they are there because they want the updates from that business. Facebook should not prevent them from getting those feeds simply because of inactivity: many people simply choose to read status updates and prefer to not interact with them. This does not mean they wish to stop receiving them.

      5. He is saying that paying for an ad does not guarantee that a fan receives my feed. Well I would argue that UNLESS that fan opts out by "unliking" or blocking my feed, that that is unethical business practice. I'm certain there are hundreds of thousands of advertisers who have spent millions of dollars in advertising, who would agree with me.

      Reply
  2. Is Facebook Screwing over Business Advertisers? | The Awakened Life says:
    December 21, 2011 at 14:29

    [...] Is Facebook Screwing over Business Advertisers? Posted on December 21, 2011 by theawakenedlife As previously featured on Elephant Journal. [...]

    Reply
  3. Shanti says:
    December 21, 2011 at 23:41

    Thanks I noticed the drop in people on my page also and noticed
    I wasn't receiving updates from some of my pages I liked, and was wondering why.
    I have shared the link! Cheers
    Shanti

    Reply
  4. Robert Krampf says:
    December 22, 2011 at 10:32

    Thank you so much for this article! I have been complaining about this to anyone who would listen. I work HARD to build my Facebook following, and then they come out with the "new and improved Facebook", which is much like "New Coca-cola", if you are old enough to remember that disaster. Before the most recent change, I was averaging 19,000-24,000 views for each post. Now, I am lucky to reach 900.

    I keep trying to figure out their logic, but the changes discourage me from buying ads. Why pay good money for people that are going to vanish because my page does not show up in their feed. I will definitely help spread the word.

    Reply
    • theawakenedlife says:
      December 22, 2011 at 11:43

      Hi Robert, I love the reference to "New Coke." I remember that fiasco very well. I was very happy when they came back out with "Classic Coke." (though I always kind of suspected that that whole thing was a marketing ploy!)

      Anyway, you are right that the stats have dramatically worsened since FB made these changes. But I do not think these are ethical business practices, considering that our fans "liked" our pages because they WANT to receive our updates. Please spread the word and share the article with all of your friends and fellow business owners. We can no longer let this giant companies walk all over the little people!

      Reply
  5. Kevin Shimp says:
    December 22, 2011 at 11:51

    I landed at this article via Robert Krampf feed. I appreciate the information. Although I do not have a FB following, nor do I have a "business" per se, I am interested in information that facilitates the truth. The bible happens to declare the truth, but many are deceived by the presuppositions of others rather than investigating on their own. Yes, I spread the Word…

    Thanks for your poignant observation. I hope (an earnest desire plus a genuine expectation), not wish, that you discover the depth of greed and expose it for what it is.

    Reply
  6. Attention Facebook Advertisers---Facebook is about to Double-Dip. | elephant journal says:
    February 29, 2012 at 20:23

    [...] past December I wrote an article postulating that Facebook was potentially defrauding advertisers out of millions (if not billions) of advertising dollars. You see, I, along with several other [...]

    Reply
  7. Atención Anunciantes de Facebook--- ¡Facebook les va a Cobrar Doble! | elephant journal says:
    February 29, 2012 at 23:53

    [...] pasado mes de diciembre escribí un artículo postulando que Facebook estaba posiblemente defraudando a los anunciantes de millones (si no miles de millones) de dólares en publicidad. Pues, yo, junto con varios otros [...]

    Reply
  8. theawakenedlife says:
    December 21, 2011 at 14:35

    Seth, thank you SO much for sharing your story. You are absolutely right that people can't engage with the content if it isn't appearing in their feed. Please spread the word! Share the article with as many people as you can, and tell all of your friends who have their own business pages. I have no doubt that hundreds of thousands of advertisers, who all told have spent millions of dollars in advertising, are being affected but these unethical business practices.

    Reply
  9. theawakenedlife says:
    March 1, 2012 at 01:20

    Seth, please check out this latest article. It impacts your business: http://www.elephantjournal.com/2012/02/attention-…

    Reply
  10. theawakenedlife says:
    December 21, 2011 at 15:11

    Kelly, thanks so much for the support! We all have to band together if we don't want these giant monopolies to trample all over us.

    Reply

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