Facebook, millennials and the art of advertising

Who doesn’t like a good ‘Facebook stalk’, catching up with what friends are up to as you sit on the train home, living vicariously through the wedding parties and holidays everyone always seems to be enjoying.

But recently, it has been different. Last week, my colleague came into the office and told me that over the weekend her Facebook news feed had substantially more adverts than user-generated content. So I took a closer look at my news feed, and there was an unusually high quantity of advertising, especially for a platform designed to connect you with your “closest friends to the public at large”.

It is no secret that Facebook is free thanks to advertising.

But as a millennial, I know that we don’t like being advertised to on social media. “[Advertising] is quite annoying as I only use Facebook to keep up with my friends,” Ana from Spain said, speaking to HubFlux.

And that is a problem for Facebook, whose 2015 annual report states: ‘We generate substantially all of our revenue from advertising. The loss of marketers, or reduction in spending by marketers, could seriously harm our business.’

Last year, the company made USD17.08 billion from advertising, accounting for 95% of Facebook’s total revenue.

Companies pay big money to advertise to the platform’s 1.7 billion global users — P&G spends over USD7 billion on Facebook advertising annually (though how they advertise is set to change).

But not everyone is seeing these adverts. According to PageFair estimates cited in The New York Times, roughly 200 million people worldwide block adverts using software on their desktop computers and an additional 420 million use ad blockers on their smartphones — the combined total of which (640 million) accounts for roughly one-third of Facebook’s users.

So, Facebook changed their advertising model, ‘disguising’ adverts to look more like posts from friends. Adblocker Plus, a free extension that allows you block ads, developed a workaround through their open source community, and a coding spat with the global social media platform began. (Facebook seems to have won — for now.)

But will it make a difference? I asked my friends.

James from the UK, said that he is “a bit annoyed that Facebook is full of adverts instead of content. But when they are intelligent, some of the adverts are really relevant, so I am happy with them.”

Echoing him, Anne from Norway, said, “I’m annoyed at it, but I really don’t mind. They seem to be adverts that I might be interested in. If I don’t like it, I’ll just block it.”

That doesn’t mean that we millennials will accept all forms of advertising.

“Hate, hate, hate sponsored content!! They’re the worst because it’s a lie. It’s trying to trick you into reading an article just to push a product, so sneaky and you clearly can’t trust any facts in the content because it will be biased towards a product. It also reduces the credibility of the site it’s on,” James said.

So it seems that social media’s relationship with advertising still has some way to go to win over millennials.