To kick off 2018, Facebook cofounder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted a list of “resolutions” on the site, mostly vowing to fix what he’d broken. Coming off a tumultuous two years, beginning with the 2016 election and ending with the charges of fake news on the platform in 2017—Facebook announced Thursday new changes to its feed to make interactions more “meaningful.”
What this means for publishers and news outlet is up in the air.
The New York Times reported the changes, which include prioritizing content from friends on the platform and downgrading posts from news outlets, publications and brands.
“This big wave of public content has really made us reflect: What are we really here to do? If what we’re here to do is help people build relationships, then we need to adjust,” Zuckerberg is quoted in the Times story.
To Facebook, this change means dubious “news” outlets spreading fake information will be less likely to show up on the feeds of its users. Last month, the company dropped the “disputed” flag that had come to denote a fake story, with little information about what comes next. The tweaks to the feed appear to be that answer.
The problem, though, is that Facebook built much of its current feed through teaching brands and outlets to cater to its algorithmic code, bolstering its business with advertising and sponsored content.
The monetary repercussions for publications and brands that have come to rely on the site as part of their revenue will have a negative temporary effect, according to analysts. However, the long-term effect could be positive, with brands learning how to target specific audiences rather than sending out a watered-down message to the entirety of a feed.
With rumored changes looming on the horizon, some outlets began to readjust ahead of the announcement. Publications planned to partially mitigate losses and navigate the changes through the use of groups.
While the group aspect of Facebook severely limits the number of people who see a post and may not drive the same amount of traffic back to a publication’s homepage, members will continue to see a publication or brand’s presence.
The changes to Facebook again illustrate how difficult it is for brands to establish consistent, reliable avenues of revenue. What once seemed like a great avenue for stability—social media—has become a new hurdle to surmount. But brands may pivot to a better strategy with greater effect.
For many, there’s a sense of relief and triumph. The role of audience development is often misunderstood as posting links to social platforms. Now, suddenly, audience development is seen as far more strategic. But with great power comes great responsibility.
For Kurt Gessler, deputy digital editor at the Chicago Tribune, there was “panic initially,” followed by vindication and, he allowed, “a little smugness.” That’s because the Tribune only posts about 10 percent of its content on Facebook, and its audience development experts do other tasks in the newsroom so they’re not isolated or working at cross-purposes with editorial.
“It reinforces a lot of the things we and others have been saying,” Gessler said of the news feed change, which Facebook said will prioritize users’ posts over news. “We were always much more interested in quality over quantity. We were never firehosing into Facebook.”
Arguably, the role of audience development — some prefer the fancier “audience engagement” — is more important than ever. The old time-tested practice of using Facebook to drive massive traffic on the cheap to build audiences and fulfill ad campaigns is going away. Building audience in a sustainable way means mastering other distributed platforms and getting direct traffic, too.
One audience exec at a major publisher likened the algorithm change to “the end of an abusive relationship. Facebook abused us for so long and we just kept going back to them, and you finally are like, ‘OK, I’m going to walk away.’”
“I think this gives them more freedom to not worry about the click but think about the engagement,” Keith Hernandez, svp of strategy at Bleacher Report, said of audience development teams. Audience development’s importance at the sports publisher has already been growing; the branded content team has been bringing audience staffers into its pitch meetings for the past six months to advise on editorial trends.
If audience people are more important, they also face more insecurity and pressure than ever. Some will have to answer for their reliance on Facebook. (Cue the schadenfreude among publishers that say they saw the writing on the wall and already weaned themselves off Facebook dependence.) They’re aware that some people think their jobs could be done just as well by tweet-writing robots. They have to figure out new rules for success at a time when Facebook reach is declining.
Academics have identified four distinct personas of social media user that teenagers describe as shaping how they behave on social media.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
Young social media users are categorised as either acting like the Geek, the Internet Celebrity, the Victim or the Lurker depending on their levels of online activity and visibility, University of Sussex academics say.
The categorisations are based on interviews the researchers conducted with children aged between 10 and 15-years-old for a new book, Researching Everyday Childhoods, published by Bloomsbury last month.
The interviews revealed many youngsters were increasingly savvy about maintaining their privacy online, often being motivated to protect themselves by unpleasant past personal experiences or negative incidents that affected classmates.
Dr Liam Berriman, lecturer in digital humanities at the University of Sussex, said: “Our research found that concerns about staying safe online created an atmosphere of intense anxiety for young people, even if they had not directly experienced any problems themselves. The young people we spoke to felt a great weight of responsibility for their safety online and were often motivated by the concern of being labelled a victim.”
“While there has been a lot of negative media coverage around teenagers’ interaction with social media, our findings are more hopeful that teenagers are responsible users of social media, are very conscious of the dangers and make considerable efforts to protect themselves against those risks.”
Teenagers navigate between the desire to be praised and recognised online and anxieties over the risk of opening themselves up to criticism and trolling. Among the four personas is the Internet Celebrity who is able to best use the latest trends and increasingly values “visibility of the self” through Instagram, Snapchat, the selfie and YouTube vlogging.
The internet celebrity
But academics also identified how young people are experimenting with and enjoying invisibility online. They describe the Lurker as someone able to avoid peer dramas arising through platforms such as Facebook, whilst still engaging in fun peer activities such as stalking their favourite music bands online.
The lurker
The Geek, meanwhile, uses invisibility to anonymously share and promote their amateur media creations online, such as music videos or fan fiction writing. The academics described how the Geeks’ long hours of labour on projects risked parental concern that their behaviour was obsessive or addictive.
The geek
Professor Rachel Thomson, professor of childhood and youth studies at the University of Sussex, said, “What is distinctive about these active social media users was the entrepreneurial character of their practice, with ‘play’ re-envisaged as a form of economically rewarding work. By gaining an audience, young people are aware that they could capture advertising and corporate sponsorship. The dream is to ‘go viral’, establishing a career as a cultural creator.”
The research also highlights the risks contained in a world dominated by personal visibility with the Victim left to suffer personal exposure and shame following the creation and display of intimate material such as sexting and the loss of control of this material.
The victim
The Victim’s high visibility is often out of their control with their presence and heightened without their consent as private material is extracted from them and exchanged under false premises.
This can vary from the frustration of being tagged in photographs and the creation of an unflattering digital footprint through the activities of others to the more invasive techniques of fraping, where a person’s online identity is hijacked without their permission, or sharing of intimate photographs.
Dr Berriman said, “These examples reveal the impossibility of non- participation in the world of social media. A teenager does not necessarily have to create an online persona, it is something that can be created by others.”
This is great food for thought for anyone trying to catch the attention of teenagers online. You may even need to consider four different approaches when targeting the teen market. Thanks, science!
Before you dish out money to bid for a top-ranked ad position on a search engine, you may want to pause and make sure it’s actually going to pay off.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
New research out of Binghamton University, State University of New York suggests that instead of just spending to get that top spot, advertisers should be considering other factors as well to ensure they are getting the best results from their sponsored search advertising campaigns.
Sponsored search advertising involves paying search engines, like Google and Bing, to bid for placements on the search results pages for specific keywords and terms. The ads appear in sponsored sections, separate from the organic search results, on those pages.
“The common belief in sponsored search advertising is that you should buy the top ad position to get more clicks, because that will lead to more sales,” said Binghamton University Assistant Professor of Marketing Chang Hee Park. “But the fee for the top position could be larger than the expected sales you’d get off that top position.”
Park, with the help of Binghamton University Professor of Marketing Manoj Agarwal, analysed data collected from a search engine and created a model that can forecast the number of clicks advertisers could expect in sponsored search markets based on four factors:
Rank in the sponsored listings
Website quality
Brand equity
Selling proposition
The model gives advertisers a way to quantify the expected clicks they’d get by adjusting these four factors, while also taking into consideration how their competitors are managing these four factors. This could enable advertisers to find a perfect blend of the four factors to ensure they are getting the most out of what they are paying for their ad positions.
It may also indicate that they should be spending more money to bolster their brand or website rather than amplifying their offers in top ad positions.
“Using this model, you may find that paying less for a lower ad position while investing more in improving your website is more effective than spending all of that money strictly on securing top ad positions,” said Agarwal.
This applies especially if your competitor has a poorer-quality website, but is spending more than you on securing top ad positions.
Their model found that poor-quality advertisers that are ranked higher in ad positions drive consumers back to the search results page, leading consumers to then click on advertisers in lower ad positions to find what they are looking for.
In contrast, they also found that a highly-ranked good-quality advertiser results in significantly less clicks for all the advertisers ranked below them.
“It’s more likely that in the top position, all advertisers being equal, you’ll get more clicks. But depending on these four factors, as well as the quality of your competitors, you may find that you’ll get more clicks in the second or the third position,” said Park.
“Conceptually, this is not a new idea, but now the model can help determine this by accounting for multiple factors at play at the same time.”
Advertisers aren’t the only ones who can benefit from this research.
Park and Agarwal’s model found that simply reordering the listed advertisers could result in significant changes in overall click volume (the total number of clicks across all advertisers) for search engines.
“Because they often charge on a pay-per-click model, search engines can now simulate which ordering of advertisers in a sponsored search market results in the most overall clicks and, therefore, most revenue” said Park. “Search engines may want to consider charging advertisers in a way that gives the search engine more flexibility in determining the order in which the ads in sponsored sections are displayed.”
While the trusty “like” button is still the most popular way to signal approval for Facebook posts, a computer model may help users and businesses navigate the increasingly complicated way people are expressing how they feel on social media.
In a study, researchers developed a social emotion mining computer model that one day could be used to better predict people’s emotional reactions to Facebook posts, said Jason Zhang, a research assistant in Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology. While Facebook once featured only one official emoticon reaction – the like button – the social media site added five more buttons – love, haha, wow, sad and angry – in early 2016.
“We want to understand the user’s reactions behind these clicks on the emoticons by modelling the problem as the ranking problem – given a Facebook post, can an algorithm predict the right ordering among six emoticons in terms of votes?” said Zhang. “But, what we found out was that existing solutions predict the user’s emotions and their rankings poorly in some times.”
Zhang added that merely counting clicks fails to acknowledge that some emoticons are less likely to be clicked than others, which is called the imbalance issue. For example, users tend to click the like button the most because it signals a positive interaction and it is also the default emoticon on Facebook.
“When we post something on Facebook, our friends tend to click the positive reactions, usually love, haha, or, simply, like, but they’ll seldom click angry,” said Zhang. “And this causes the severe imbalance issue.”
For social media managers and advertisers, who spend billions buying Facebook advertisements each year, this imbalance may skew their analysis on how their content is actually performing on Facebook, said Dongwon Lee, associate professor of information sciences and technology. The new model – which they call robust label ranking, or ROAR – could lead to better analytic packages for social media analysts and researchers.
“A lot of the commercial advertisements on Facebook are driven by likes,” said Lee. “Eventually, if we can predict these emoticons more accurately using six emoticons, we can build a better model that can discern more precise distribution of emotions in the social platforms with only one emoticon – like – such as on Facebook before 2016. This is a step in the direction of creating a model that could tell, for instance, that a Facebook posting made in 2015 with a million likes in fact consists only 80 percent likes and 20 percent angry. If such a precise understanding on social emotions is possible, that may impact how you advertise.”
The researchers used an AI technique called “supervised machine learning” to evaluate their newly-developed solution. In this study, the researchers trained the model using four Facebook post data sets including public posts from ordinary users, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, and showed that their solution significantly outperformed existing solutions. All four sets of data were analysed after Facebook introduced the six emoticons in 2016.
The researchers suggest future research may explore the multiple meanings for liking a post.
“Coming up with right taxonomy for the meanings of like is another step in the research,” said Lee. “When you click on the like button, you could really be signalling several emotions – maybe you agree with it, or you’re adding your support, or you just like it.”
And we as marketers know, the more you understand how your market feels, the better you can tailor your advertising to them.
People will always pay more when being led by the heart and not the head.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
Brides and the bereaved beware: You, like many shoppers, may have a tendency to reject thriftiness when your purchase is a matter of the heart, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.
People are reluctant to seek cost-saving options when buying what they consider sacred – such as engagement rings, cremation urns, or even desserts for a birthday party – for or to commemorate loved ones. The paper, published in Judgment and Decision Making, is the first to examine the implications of this phenomenon.
Even when they identify a less expensive alternative to be equally desirable, people choose the more expensive of two items. They also avoid searching for lower prices and negotiating better prices when the goods they’re buying are symbolic of love.
“People’s buying behaviour changes when they’re making purchases out of love because it feels wrong to engage in cost-saving measures,” said Peter McGraw, associate professor of marketing and psychology at CU. “People abandon cost-saving measures when it comes to sentimental buys because they want to avoid having to decide what is the right amount of money to spend on a loving relationship.”
The findings highlight how wedding, funeral and other industries can exploit consumers, said McGraw.
In one part of the study, which involved nearly 245 participants, the researchers asked attendees at a Boulder wedding show about their preference between two engagement rings. The attendees nearly always chose the more expensive ring when deciding between a more expensive ring with a bigger carat and a less expensive ring with a smaller carat.
“It’s important to be aware of this tendency not to seek cost savings because, over a lifetime, consumers make many purchases that are symbolic of love — whether for weddings, funerals, birthdays, and anniversaries,” said McGraw. “The loss of savings can really add up and put people in compromising financial situations.”
So how can we apply this to a marketing situation? If you are selling goods or services for sentimental events, play up the quality, not the price.
Facebook has announced it will prioritize “meaningful, social interactions” within the news feed in algorithm updates, in order to better connect users to meaningful posts between friends and family.
What does this means for marketers who run business Facebook pages? Facebook will show less of that content, or what it calls “public content,” including videos and other posts from publishers or businesses.
If this has you frightened, it’s not quite time to jump ship yet. Yes, it’s a pretty big change for your Facebook organic marketing and engagement efforts, for now.
The good news is we’ve got some ways for you to prepare and shift your Facebook engagement efforts.
Here are things you should know — and do — about Facebook’s News Feed changes.
Create Meaningful Social Interactions
The bottom line for marketers is meaningful, social interactions are now the most important thing in terms what Facebook likes to serve up prominently in a news feed. Facebook announced the news feed changes in a blog post by Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook’s news feed. The ranking changes are the first step in, “making updates to ranking so people have more opportunities to interact with the people they care about,” states Mosseri in the aforementioned blog. According to him, Pages may see their reach, video watch time and referral traffic decrease.
User feedback suggests public content posts from businesses, brands and media is, “crowding out the personal moments that lead us to connect more with each other,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a post. So Zuckerberg and team Facebook made a major change in that product teams at the social network will shift focus from helping users find relevant content to helping users find more “meaningful social interactions.”
“For example,” Zuckerberg says, “there are many tight-knit communities around TV shows and sports teams. We’ve seen people interact way more around live videos than regular ones. Some news helps start conversations on important issues. But too often today, watching video, reading news or getting a page update is just a passive experience.”
Recognize What Facebook Likes
You should know what Facebook will be watching out for in terms of meaningful posts from Pages. And you should brace for which kind of posts will get less exposure in the News Feed. “Pages making posts that people generally don’t react to or comment on could see the biggest decreases in distribution,” Mosseri said. “Pages whose posts prompt conversations between friends will see less of an effect… Using “engagement-bait” to goad people into commenting on posts is not a meaningful interaction, and we will continue to demote these posts in news feed.”
Keep this material in mind when crafting business page posts:
Facebook uses signals like how many people react to, comment on or share posts to determine how high they appear in news feed.
Facebook will predict which posts you might want to interact with your friends about, and show these posts higher in the news feed. These are posts that inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments and posts that you might want to share and react to.
Facebook will prioritize posts from friends and family over public content, consistent with its news feed values.
Your loyal Page followers can still see more posts from your Page if they choose “See First in News Feed Preferences.”
No Impact on Paid Advertising
Marketers and advertisers need not worry about paid-advertising efforts on Facebook. No changes to ads ranking for Facebook will occur through this change. Facebook’s Ads auction already optimizes for user value. Facebook’s systems will continue to take into account relevancy and feedback to deliver ads to the right people based on a company’s business objectives. Engagement is a very small part of ads ranking. Facebook relies on many other data points to determine what ads people see to ensure relevancy and value.
Use Your Page as ‘Hub for Thoughtful Content’
Kristin Johnson, director of communications for Sprout Social, told CMSWire that marketers should reframe Facebook within their strategy and reach beyond their own content and resources. “Instead of using your Facebook Page as another house for owned resources and links use it as a hub for thoughtful content and conversation around the topics your company and community care about,” she says.
Johnson cited Sprout Social research that confirms that 68 percent of people want to see brands joining in on conversations, giving marketers the opportunity to be more creative with their engagement strategies. “That is the type of interactive content people — and, in turn, platforms — actually respond to. This engagement-first approach will not only help your brand stand out, it will also carve out a defined purpose and opportunity for Facebook moving forward,” says Johnson.
Be a Video Hero
Stacy Maynard, social media strategist, says businesses need to focus on both live video and uploading native recorded video. Facebook is giving more visibility to video based posts. “We are seeing a shift to Digital TV and made for Social TV. Everyone has a TV camera in their pocket so ensure you find the right platform for your video goals. Focus on video for your Facebook feed. Video is the fastest growing ad format and by 2020 video will make up 80 percent of consumer Internet traffic,” says Maynard.
To break through the algorithmic challenge, try using live streaming and stories in order to get your business more news feed love. Facebook Live video is watched three times longer than regular videos and shows up higher in search results, according to Maynard.
You should also consider live videos simply because Facebook likes live videos. Stats make it clear, on average they get six times as many interactions as regular videos, according to Mosseri. “Though some have predicted that branded video will be hit by these news feed changes I don’t think it will be. Live and short-form video are the best-performing categories of content on Facebook for brands in my experience,” says Cappy Popp, principal and co-founder of Thought Labs.
Become Relevant
Greg Ng, vice president of digital engagement at PointSource, a Globant company, called Facebook’s change to the algorithm a huge wake-up call for brands. Brands that have traditionally existed with questionable ROI based on Likes and Shares in their Facebook marketing now need to “scramble to become relevant.”
Increase investment in influencer marketing, Ng suggested. For example, a makeup brand may struggle to be prioritized in a customer’s Facebook feed. “But, if a friend receives a sample and posts about it for their network, the brand may receive a higher positioning in the feed, thus more influence, in theory. This will create a need for Facebook to clearly define the rules around disclosure and paid endorsements, so brands can’t abuse marketing opportunities with influencers,” says Ng.
Change up your content strategy. “Without the luxury of showing up on a feed in a timely manner, content will have to be more engaging, more shareable and more urgent than ever before,” Ng says.
Consider Marketing Channel Alternatives
Nate Elliott, former Forrester analyst and principal of Nineteen Insights, suggests marketers should treat Facebook like any other paid media channel. “Give your Facebook budget to your media buying team so they can decide when to invest on Facebook and when those dollars will work better in search or display. And rather than optimizing for engagement, optimize for traditional success metrics like awareness and conversions,” says Elliott.
Elliott also suggests investing in relationship marketing channels that you control, like email. “It was always risky putting customer relationships in the hands of a third party. Encourage fans to sign up for emails, not to follow you on Facebook. If you have their email address you know that 90 percent of your messages will get through.”
User Interaction the Key
Focus on content that encourages, maybe requires, user interaction, according to Popp. “Making sure your content encourages (interaction) will go a long way to mitigating the difficulties these changes bring. Same goes for shareable content. Always a Holy Grail, true, but there’s nothing that will limit users from sharing branded content with their networks. User-shared content is ‘in-network’. It’s all hypothetical at the moment. … For marketers, experimentation, A/B testing, and rising costs are are going to come into play. We’re all in the dark at this point,” says Popp.
Feature Image:
Businesses need to be prepared for news ways to show up prominently in Facebook’s News Feed through organic posts. PHOTO: English106
Here are some of the main mistakes that big businesses make when it comes to using Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the rest.
Social media is a vital tool for large corporates to market their products and communicate with their vast audiences, but even with big budgets and top teams, they can still get it totally wrong.
For example, Charlie Cottrell, head of editorial at media agency, We Are Social, thinks that big brands are still offending audiences on social media with worrying frequency.
Part of this stems from them being told that a millennial audience prefers companies that stand for something and reflect their progressive values, she explains. It’s likely because of this advice that campaigns have gone after stories with a strong social or cultural theme.
However, businesses run the risk of being accused of exploitation by not having a genuine connection to the cultural subject matter, thinks Ms Cottrell.
She says that “it’s better to be an ally, not a protagonist, and it’s important to remember that people have fought and suffered for lifetimes to see change on subjects such as civil and marriage rights.”
Brands and agencies must ensure that teams reflect the breadth of contemporary culture and stop trying to guess at it, she adds.
Don’t oversell
Mícheál Nagle, head of social and digital content at Paddy Power, advises businesses not to populate their social accounts with constant offers and products.
“Nobody wants to follow a business that does that,” he explains.
So what does a good social media content strategy look like? Paddy Power tries to create fun posts that engage with customers for 80pc of the time – and then try to upsell with products or offers for the remaining 20pc.
Just because memes are popular and easy to share, doesn’t mean that you shouldDavid Brady, TalkTalk
“It’s about cultivating a value exchange between a business and a consumer,” says TalkTalk’s senior digital marketing manager, David Brady. “If it’s not relevant, it’s not engaging.”
Mr Brady says that firms can find out what’s relevant to consumers by profiling them based on behaviours and needs (not by sales targets) and by asking what they need and how your business can help.
“You can then combine your first-party data with the wealth of personal and interest-based social data,” he says.
Above all, listen to what your customers are saying, he adds:
“Make it engaging by educating them about how your product or service solves a problem – don’t just shout about its features.
“Be conversational, but to the point.”
And remember, he says: you’re representing your business and its values, so just because memes are popular and easy to share, it doesn’t mean that you should.
Don’t blur the personal-professional line
Nick Masters, head of online at PwC, says that it’s important to consider the difference between a corporate social media account that shares company updates and info, and one manned by vocal or visible members of staff.
It’s an issue, he thinks, when employees post through company accounts, signing off posts with their initials or saying as such at the beginning of their shift.
Deliberately or not, accounts run in this way can become too
chatty (“cheers!”) and personal (“Hi Joe, love the post!”)
which Mr Masters thinks can sound inauthentic.
He says: “By their nature, organisations can’t express emotions or engage in public debate.
“We encourage PwC staff to have a personal presence on social media and engage directly through their accounts.
“It’s about real people responding in a more appropriate way.”
Feature Image: Implement an 80/20 rule, says Paddy Power’s Mícheál Nagle: ‘engage 80pc of the time, then upsell with products or offers for the remaining 20pc’Credit: PA/Dominic Lipinski
So, which citizens trust their media the most? And the least?
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
Let’s start with the USA. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that trust in the U.S. has suffered the largest-ever-recorded drop in the survey’s history among the general population. Trust among the general population fell nine points to 43, placing it in the lower quarter of the 28-country Trust Index. It is now the lowest of the 28 countries surveyed, below Russia and South Africa.
The collapse of trust in the U.S. is driven by a staggering lack of faith in government, which fell 14 points to 33 percent among the general population, and 30 points to 33 percent among the informed public. The remaining institutions of business, media and NGOs also experienced declines of 10 to 20 points. These decreases have all but eliminated last year’s 21-point trust gap between the general population and informed public in the U.S.
“The United States is enduring an unprecedented crisis of trust,” said Richard Edelman, president and CEO of Edelman. “This is the first time that a massive drop in trust has not been linked to a pressing economic issue or catastrophe like the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In fact, it’s the ultimate irony that it’s happening at a time of prosperity, with the stock market and employment rates in the U.S. at record highs. The root cause of this fall is the lack of objective facts and rational discourse.”
Conversely, China finds itself atop the Trust Index for both the general population (74) and the informed public (83). Institutions within China saw significant increases in trust led by government, which jumped eight points to 84 percent among the general population, and three points to 89 percent within the informed public. Joining China at the top of the Trust Index are India, Indonesia, UAE and Singapore.
For the first time media is the least trusted institution globally. In 22 of the 28 countries surveyed it is now distrusted. The demise of confidence in the Fourth Estate is driven primarily by a significant drop in trust in platforms, notably search engines and social media. Sixty-three percent of respondents say they do not know how to tell good journalism from rumour or falsehoods or if a piece of news was produced by a respected media organisation. The lack of faith in media has also led to an inability to identify the truth (59 percent), trust government leaders (56 percent) and trust business (42 percent).
This year saw a revival of faith in experts and decline in peers. Technical (63 percent) and academic (61 percent) experts distanced themselves as the most credible spokesperson from “a person like yourself,” which dropped six points to an all-time low of 54 percent.
“In a world where facts are under siege, credentialed sources are proving more important than ever,” said Stephen Kehoe, Global chair, Reputation. “There are credibility problems for both platforms and sources. People’s trust in them is collapsing, leaving a vacuum and an opportunity for bona fide experts to fill.”
Business is now expected to be an agent of change. The employer is the new safe house in global governance, with 72 percent of respondents saying that they trust their own company. And 64 percent believe a company can take actions that both increase profits and improve economic and social conditions in the community where it operates.
This past year saw CEO credibility rise sharply by seven points to 44 percent after a number of high-profile business leaders voiced their positions on the issues of the day. Nearly two-thirds of respondents say they want CEOs to take the lead on policy change instead of waiting for government, which now ranks significantly below business in trust in 20 markets. This show of faith comes with new expectations; building trust (69 percent) is now the No. 1 job for CEOs, surpassing producing high-quality products and services (68 percent).
“Silence is a tax on the truth,” said Edelman. “Trust is only going to be regained when the truth moves back to centre stage. Institutions must answer the public’s call for providing factually accurate, timely information and joining the public debate. Media cannot do it alone because of political and financial constraints. Every institution must contribute to the education of the populace.”
Other key findings from the 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer include:
Technology (75 percent) remains the most trusted industry sector followed by Education (70 percent), professional services (68 percent) and transportation (67 percent). Financial services (54 percent) was once again the least trusted sector along with consumer packaged goods (60 percent) and automotive (62 percent).
Companies headquartered in Canada (68 percent), Switzerland (66 percent), Sweden (65 percent) and Australia (63 percent) are most trusted. The least trusted country brands are Mexico (32 percent), India (32 percent), Brazil (34 percent) and China (36 percent). Trust in brand U.S. (50 percent) dropped five points, the biggest decline of the countries surveyed.
Nearly seven in 10 respondents worry about fake news and false information being used as a weapon.
Exactly half of those surveyed indicate that they interact with mainstream media less than once a week, while 25 percent said they read no media at all because it is too upsetting. And the majority of respondents believe that news organizations are overly focused on attracting large audiences (66 percent), breaking news (65 percent) and politics (59 percent).
It’s a brave new world, and we as marketers must realise that placing any marketing cash with distrusted media outlets could mean a very big waste of our advertising spending power.
Agencies believe brands will have to spend more on paid ads on Facebook in order to get the same number of views — further lining Facebook’s pockets. This is just the “final nail in the existing coffin” of organic reach, said Doug Baker, director of strategic services at digital agency AnalogFolk.
Facebook’s ad rates have risen by 35 percent in the last quarter alone. Agencies have noticed a slow decline in organic reach on Facebook for some time. Digital agency Jellyfish said organic reach on Facebook is already around 2 percent across most European clients. John Hegeman, Facebook’s vp of product management, said in a statement on the news feed update that advertising on the social network will be “unaffected,” but agencies disagree.
Far too many brands pump bland broadcast comms into mass-reach media buys on Facebook and spam millions of news feeds, said Mobbie Nazir, chief strategy officer at agency We Are Social. Now, there will be far more onus on planning Facebook campaigns that go deeper into media planning, campaign execution and optimization, and reporting on various metrics, she added.
“We all need to become better media planners, said Greg Allum, head of social at Jellyfish. There’s a “fundamental shift” in the roles of traditional social media marketers encapsulated in the news feed update, he added. Not only “do you have to understand brand and content,” marketers also require a key understanding of how to plan media campaigns on social.
For many brands, the bigger challenge will emerge from Facebook’s parallel war on low-quality brand content, with the platform’s December announcement that it was deprioritizing “engagement bait.” While agencies accept it will be difficult for most brands to be consistently “meaningful” — particularly when competing with treasured moments with friends and family — there is an opportunity to drive higher creative standards. “Those brands that look to add value to people’s lives and invest in high-quality, original content will have the most sustained success,” Baker said.
The risk could come once brands find loopholes in the algorithm. “I can see brands that tap into authentic conversations with a credible point of view will do well,” said Chris Pearce, the CEO at digital agency TMW Unlimited, “whereas others will be tempted to be increasingly controversial or polarizing in order to stimulate conversation.”
Another risk is if posts are boosted. Ad rankings on Facebook are not affected by the news feed’s overhaul. But as Kevin Chan, the integrated performance director at iProspect, pointed out, if a boosted page post is getting less organic reach due to these changes, then that might impact the auction. Engagement is a “very small” part of ad ranking on the social network, which relies on many other data points to determine what ads people see to ensure relevancy and value, he said.
It seems like Facebook is returning to being a social network rather than a news organization. In the enduring debate on Facebook’s impact on post-truth politics, the social network has continually denied it is a media company. This algorithm change looks like a step to confirm that, returning to the days of wall posts and status updates.
In terms of how this change will be pitched to brands, Edie Greaves, senior strategist at digital agency Possible, believes there will be a continuation of the stance from both Facebook and Snapchat that brands are “partners,” not “advertisers.”
Greaves believes Facebook will begin offering brands new ways to communicate with people, but they will have to up their spend to get into the news feed. Perhaps Facebook will follow in the footsteps of networks like WeChat that heavily restrict the role brands play in the news feed but give more free reign to advertisers within messaging apps, she added.
