As the war between the Australian government and Facebook drags on, signs are growing that the Big Tech titan has badly miscalculated. Aside from the horror publicity for Facebook, the Australian government immediately retaliated by pulling all government advertising on the platform.
Now private companies are following the government’s suit and pulling their own advertising.
Advertisers have begun redirecting their spending away from Facebook amid acrimonious negotiations over a media code and a continuing ban on news publishers posting to the platform.
The federal government has also expanded its moratorium on Facebook advertising from coronavirus-related messaging, with Finance Minister Simon Birmingham describing the ban on news publishers as an attempt to “exert power or influence over our democratic systems”[…]
The government spent about $42m on digital advertising in the last financial year, with the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission suggesting one-quarter of all online spending in the country is with Facebook.
$42m is nothing to be sneezed at, even if it represents a fraction of Facebook’s income. But it is the appearance that counts: the government is sending a signal that they don’t need Facebook in order to reach their audience, the Australian public.
Private enterprise are also voting with their dollars.
Advertising agencies also told The Australian that clients had begun reconsidering Facebook, with others suggesting it would fall further as consumers who used the platform to read the news found other ways to do so.
“We have seen a significant drop in advertising spend,” said Judy Sahay, the managing director of Crowd Media.
“The impact didn’t just affect news outlets but also Facebook groups and community groups.
“I believe this will have a ripple effect with more businesses finding ways to spend their advertising dollar elsewhere,” she said.
More importantly, Facebook has shown advertisers that it is a bully and an extremely bad-faith dealer. For instance, even as my own little news page is blocked by Facebook, they have the cheek to continue to importune me to spend money advertising on their platform. As if.
But for businesses who have already spent, often bigly, advertising on Facebook, having their presence on the platform summarily yanked is leaving a very bad taste in their mouths.
“Imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars a month in building a community on Facebook over a long period of time and being told one day that your accounts will no longer be active. As a business, this is frightening.”
Facebook bungled the rollout of its surprise news ban last week, inadvertently blocking charities, local councils, politicians and even the 1800Respect counselling service[…]
The latest row between publishers and Facebook has inadvertently drawn in other sectors, including online retailers. Paul Zahra, the chief executive of the Australian Retailers Association, said it was “unfortunate”.
“Facebook is a key part of the online sales strategy for many retailers and sharing news about products and services is part and parcel of their activities online,” he said.
We’re not talking about the Big End of Town, either, but often tiny, Mum and Dad businesses, already struggling to deal with the Wuhan plague.
Zora Tan-Sheppard was one small businesswoman to get caught up in Facebook’s surprise new ban on Thursday — despite the fact she uses the platform to sell exotic fruits online.
“My husband has been unemployed since March last year due to COVID, so we were on one income,” Ms Tan-Sheppard said.
Facebook on Monday afternoon restored Ms Tan-Sheppard’s business page but she said she would no longer be solely reliant on the platform. “The lesson is don’t put your eggs in the one basket,” she said. “Having everything blacked out on my Facebook page, it’s affected me really emotionally and mentally.”
The Australian
Australia might seem a small power in the global scheme of things, but its influence is often pivotal. As with China’s attempts to bully Australia, Facebook’s big-stick approach is being watched around the world. Advertising is 98% of Facebook’s revenue. Once advertisers start walking away from the platform, even a global behemoth like Facebook may quickly find itself in trouble.
Facebook might be one of the biggest Big Tech corporations in the world at the moment, but then, so was MySpace.
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