Recent challenges with paid content amplification

Numbers have indicated that the growth of Facebook has been declining as of late, which is bad news for marketers. In fact, recent reports show that there has been a sharp decline in the organic reach of posts of Facebook.

Last month, a survey conducted by Ogilvy that included over one hundred brand pages announced that, in terms of organic reach, published content by brands is "destined to hit zero." As it stands, there was a 49 percent drop of organic reach over a span of four months; brands with over 500,000 likes barely hit 2 percent in their reach in February.

The Mobile Media Summit gave companies like Ignited their chance to air their grievances.

"Right now we're very mad at Facebook," said Dave Martin, Ignited's senior vice president of media."The reason we're so mad at Facebook is because Facebook won't allow us to share content with our followers and fans as we could a week ago."

At the end of last year, Facebook debuted a new method for how content was seen on the News Feed by allowing anyone to pay for a “boost post,” ensuring that organic reach would decline due to prioritizing paid posts. Unfortunately for companies like Ignited, this option of “pay-for-play” hasn’t exactly paid off. Martin claims that when his company purchases ads, it “takes longer and costs more than it ever has, and our engagement scores go down.”

"It's become a real nightmare because your fans and likes can't even find you in some cases," Martin said. "When I post to Instagram I have a much better idea of how many people I'm going to reach."

Others in the industry, such as Mike Vaccaro, chief client officer at Digitaria, are frustrated at the system but hope that Facebook’s interests are not strictly focused on their own financial gain. He does, however, believe that thanks to Facebook’s actions, there will eventually be a revival within other marketing platforms.

And those kinds of statements aren’t just based on opinions. Research firms can confirm that:

“[b]rands and agencies are not openly talking about their discontent,” says Nate Elliot, Forrester analyst. “Every day I talk to brands that are disillusioned with Facebook and are now placing their bets on other social sites.”

While the future of Facebook’s importance for casual use as well as digital marketing may be unclear, it’s obvious that marketers who use Facebook have become a victim of their own content-sharing success. Even Twitter has taken up the idea with their “Promoted Tweets,” which show up in a user’s timeline even if the user does not follow the company or brand, which only goes to show that this may just be the beginning for paid promotional content on social media platforms.

Source:  https://www.cmo.com.au/article/542199/facebooks_declining_organic_reach_real_nightmare_marketers/