Once again, Facebook is making some significant changes to the News Feed (you probably know this because people are freaking out). This time, the changes revolve around improving user experience by cutting down on sponsored content — but what does that mean for advertisers and Facebook businesses?
As it turns out, not a ton – just a higher content standard and the accompanying challenge of creating positive, enjoyable content. Maybe.
Anyone who’s spent any time on Facebook in the past few years knows that it’s as much an advertising business as it is a social network. It’s impossible to make it more than a few posts into your News Feed without seeing a “Suggested Post”-type ad, and unless you use an ad-blocker, your sidebar is full of even more blatant attempts to sell or promote products only loosely related to your likes and interests.
It appears that no one is less happy about this than the man himself. Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to dial back advertising posts in favor of user-created content, conversation-inspiring posts, and other non-public items of interest. The goal is to connect you more consistently with the content that you love rather than the content that you tolerate; as you can probably guess, advertisers aren’t thrilled about this notion — some are even considering it an ad-pocalypse.
That’s a little dramatic.
The road to creating engaging, profitable ads for this new Facebook is relatively simple, if not easy. Facebook will be prioritizing posts that objectively bring happiness and positive experiences to users, meaning that your ads will need to be intrinsically fulfilling for your target demographic. While relying on “traditional” marketing strategies like clickbait titles and high initial engagement numbers won’t get you there, retaining people with your content will.
In fact, this move is fundamentally similar to YouTube’s policy wherein creators are paid more for longer audience view times than if their audiences flake out after a few seconds. One might argue that such a policy was put into place to safeguard against meaningless content with catchy titles, and that’s exactly what Facebook appears to be doing here.
With this return to their roots, Facebook is making steps toward bringing positivity back into social media — something we all could benefit from right about now.
Jack Lloyd has a BA in Creative Writing from Forest Grove's Pacific University; he spends his writing days using his degree to pursue semicolons, freelance writing and editing, oxford commas, and enough coffee to kill a bear. His infatuation with rain is matched only by his dry sense of humor.
