This is the fourth installment of a five part blog series we’re doing on trying to remain ethical in social media advertising in the current age of AI algorithms. Make sure to follow along to get the most out of this mini-series.
This week, we’ll be talking about Meta’s ad campaigns and how they’re failing small businesses. A ton of businesses are experiencing inconsistent performance from their Facebook ads, leading them to wonder if they’re doing anything at all.
While some profiles aren’t experiencing any issues at all with their ad campaigns, others are seeing drastic changes and negative metrics. These sudden, seemingly random changes in ad performance are making many companies concerned about the time, money, and effort they’re pouring into these underperforming ads.
One of the main issues lately has been that Facebook’s ad targeting is failing due to bugs, bots, and recent changes to the system following updates to privacy regulations. As the system is being reworked to accommodate these new, stricter privacy regulations, the new changes are breaking old parts, making the entire targeting section unreliable.
Additionally, there’s been a huge uptick in bots and spam accounts interacting with ads, leading to inaccurate data metrics. While ad campaigns may be showing a lot of engagement and clicks, without the sales to back them up, it’s likely those clicks aren’t even coming from real people.
Although these issues are causing some businesses to take a step back from using Meta’s advertising systems, the company as a whole is still performing well and accruing profits. This means that there’s little financial motivation for Meta to fix these issues as long as companies continue to spend enough on ads to put money in Meta’s pockets.
Speaking of putting money in Meta’s pockets, they are now asking individual small businesses to pay for their Apple store fees. Apple has always required in-app purchases for any services or goods that are purchased in the apps from their app store. They recently began to enforce that system on Facebook and Instagram for their ads and the boosting of posts.
Meta has turned around and said that they will now be charging users who want to put out ads or boost posts the 30% service fee that Apple is requiring them to pay. Now, since Meta is as large as it is and has so many different ways to gain revenue, it’s generally agreed that they could easily give Apple 30% and still make a profit. However, they decided to pass that charge onto their customers, making it difficult for small businesses who are already questioning how valuable these ads are to them.
Of course, we can see why they’d want someone else to pick up that tricky little Apple fee, but we think that larger businesses should be the ones to carry that burden if Meta refuses to take it on themselves. Many of the small businesses that are interested in Facebook ads or boosting posts are already struggling to see the value. This could be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
For small businesses who are experiencing all the struggles we’ve talked about so far in this series, this extra charge is a massive hit. Why would they want to pay more for the same underperforming ads that feel increasingly like pointless money suckers?
Yeah, we don’t blame you for being put off Meta ads and looking to diversify your marketing strategies. That’s why next time, we’ll start thinking about other strategies for small businesses looking to get their name out there. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when we post the next part.