They offered not-so-subtle reminders that hate speech and disinformation can be seen in social media posts and videos from YouTube to Twitter to Snapchat. “Many of you have expressed concern that a boycott on Facebook is unlikely to stop there, boycotts tend to spread to other platforms/media and boycotting in general is not the way for us to make progress together,” Facebook’s Everson wrote to ad clients in an June email. “I also really hope by now you know that we do not make policy changes tied to revenue pressure.”
In late June, Coca-Cola followed Unilever by including more platforms in its ad pause, including Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, alongside Facebook and Instagram. Coca-Cola said it will return to YouTube and LinkedIn, but plans to still avoid Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Deciding to return
Unilever last week said its policy to avoid social media for the rest of the year remains, but Ben & Jerry’s has said it will return to advertising on Facebook to promote political causes that it cares about, which falls under one of the loopholes of the boycott. The organizers made exceptions for political causes, social issues and nonprofits, because of how significant a role the platform plays in reaching sympathetic audiences.
“In the U.S., we are stopping all paid advertising for our products on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the rest of 2020, both to send a message to Facebook and Twitter, and also because this election is just too important,” a Ben & Jerry’s spokesman told Ad Age. “We will, however, continue to run paid advertising in support of our ongoing activism campaigns that focus on racial justice and equity, and specifically our 2020 election work.”
Other brands just don’t know what to do, caught between a publicly stated commitment to social responsibility and the need to get back to business as usual. So far, the response has been mixed, with some major advertisers saying they will avoid Facebook and Instagram. Others say they will avoid all social media, and others are jumping back in.
Ford, which cut all social media ads in July, now says it will return to YouTube and Pinterest, but stay away from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.
Facebook, meanwhile, disputes that brands have cause to maintain the rebellion. Everson says the company has already made significant changes, and outlined a clear path for brands to measure its progress in the coming months.
In fact, on Thursday, the day before the official end of the boycott, Everson sent a personal guarantee to marketers that Facebook was about to implement some of the strictest brand safety protocols in the industry and open the platform to independent checks that would verify the work.
“That is my job, my job is to be the face of Facebook to the industry, and take their feedback, get their feedback, go back into the company, ensure that we have the right actions in place,” Everson says in a phone interview on Friday. “So I can go and look people in the eye that I have known for 20-plus years and say we’re committed and we’re on this and here’s the timeline. Here’s a set of deliverables, which we have sent out yesterday to many, many clients. They have the timeline in their hands and I’ve said to them, ‘hold us accountable.’”
With these assurances, some brands on the sidelines have been convinced. The North Face, the first major advertiser to join Stop Hate for Profit in June, says it is back. Novartis and Pernod Ricard say they are ready to resume spending. Joshua Lowcock, chief digital officer at UM and global brands safety officer at Mediabrands, says that many agency clients are ready to return to Facebook, but some holdouts remained. Lowcock also sits on what’s known as the Facebook Client Council, which is a group of agencies and brands that work with the social network to identify industry-wide issues and fix them for marketers.
“As we reach the end of the boycott, I would emphasize the position that the organizers made, which is that Facebook made some concessions,” Lowcock says. “What’s important is to hold Facebook accountable to the promises that it has made. Let’s be realistic, Facebook’s ability to achieve any of the asks by the end of July was limited.”
The aftermath
Facebook’s bankbook is fatter than ever, but the organizers of the boycott were never under the illusion that they could strike a serious blow to the company’s bottom line. And they didn’t: The company issued second-quarter earnings on Thursday, which covers April through June, so it’s not reflective of what happened in July. Still, Facebook said that its financial outlook essentially remained the same during the period of the protest.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also triumphantly announced in an earnings call that there are now more than 9 million advertisers on his platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Facebook had more than 8 million advertisers the last time it disclosed that number earlier this year.
Facebook generated $18.3 billion in ad revenue in the second quarter, an increase of 10 percent year-over-year, which was viewed as strong growth during the pandemic. Facebook benefited from the global shutdown because more people were home in need of communication, the kind that the social network provides. Facebook’s monthly user base grew to 3.14 billion people on its network of apps, up from 2.99 billion in the first quarter.
“Some also seem to wrongly assume that our business is dependent on a few large advertisers,” Zuckerberg told Wall Street analysts, striking a defiant tone that appeared aimed at commentary around the boycott. “Now, while we value every single one of the businesses that use our platforms, the biggest part of our business is serving small businesses.”
What did it accomplish?
Facebook executives say they do not bow to outside pressure when making their decisions. On the second-quarter earnings call, Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, reiterated that point, too.
“I think oftentimes, when companies are boycotted, it is because they don’t agree with what the boycotters want and that’s not true at all here,” Sandberg said. “We completely agree that we don’t want hate on our platforms, and we stand firmly against it. You know, we don’t benefit from hate speech, we never have. Users don’t want to see it, advertisers don’t want to be associated with it.”
In addition to concessions like hiring the civil rights leader, Facebook has tapped the Media Rating Council to conduct an independent audit of hate speech and offensive content on the platform. It’s also working with an industry group, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which was formed last year just for this type of situation. Brands and agencies launched GARM to tackle hate speech, come up with definitions for offensive content, and then hold internet platforms to those standards.
In many ways, Facebook is ahead of rivals on this front. It is the first major platform to agree to an MRC audit to analyze hate content, and it released a civil rights audit in July that dissected the business to understand how the platform has blind spots that could foster discrimination.
But there’s more work to be done. Advertisers are demanding a whole new system for News Feed, which is the stream of content that 1.8 billion users see every day. The News Feed is customized for every user, and advertisers say they want to know more about the context in which their ads run. “Clients need to know what they are next to, there needs to be third-party verification, and they need to allow clients to have a dashboard to be able to look back and see where the ads ran," said a media buyer at a large agency.
Tatenda Musapatike, who leads ad campaigns for a progressive digital nonprofit called ACRONYM, is a former member of Facebook’s political ads team. She says that Facebook’s changes and new commitments to brand safety show that the boycott served its purpose. She has been critical of the company, but thinks the boycott may have led the company reevaluate its corporate responsibility that aligns more closely with where the American people sit now.
“When you have some of the largest advertisers on the platform pausing for the moment to say, ‘Hey, we need you to address these issues that deeply concern us,’ and when people are willing to sacrifice profitable returns for their values,” Musapatike says. “That says a lot and I think it forces a company to reconcile how they’re thinking about their policies and political impact.”
Contributed: Jack Neff, Jeanine Poggi, Adrianne Pasquarelli, E.J. Schultz and Jessica Wohl
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Will the Facebook boycott have any lasting impact? - AdAge.com
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