A growing number of the world’s leading brands are pulling the plug on Facebook ads in the biggest boycott the social network has ever faced. The Stop Hate for Profit campaign has called upon all businesses “to stand in solidarity with our most deeply held American values of freedom, equality and justice and not advertise on Facebook’s services in July.”
Now, more than 400 companies have answered the call to join the campaign and pull their Facebook ad spend over the network’s perceived lack of action against hate speech, harmful content and fake news.
Some brands have even pulled their entire social spending budget from all networks but the Facebook boycott is dominating headlines around the world. Major brands may have the clout to force Facebook into taking action and possibly put the advertising network at risk but what does the boycott mean for the many thousands of smaller businesses who rely on the network to attract new customers.
How big is the Facebook boycott?
At the time of writing, more than 400 businesses have joined the Stop Hate for Profit boycott and paused their Facebook Advertising spend for the month of July. Some of the world’s biggest brands have joined the boycott, too, including:
- Adidas
- Ben & Jerry’s
- Coca-Cola
- Ford Motor
- Honda
- HP Inc
- LEGO
- Mars
- Microsoft
- Patagonia
- Puma
- The North Face
- Starbucks
- Upwork
- Unilever
- Vans
- Verizon
Clearly, there’s a lot of brand power behind this movement and the campaign has, at the very least, succeeded in bringing the issue of ad policies into the mainstream news. This is a topic that constantly resurfaces but recent events in the US surrounding the death of George Floyd – among other members of the black community – and the subsequent Black Lives Matter movement has placed a different kind of emphasis on the issue.
Criticism of Facebook’s ad policy and perceived lack of action against political messaging was previously centred around elections and general media bias.
The Stop Hate for Profit campaign has a very different message: the impact Facebook’s actions (or lack of) have on human lives, hate crime and inequality.
What does the boycott aim to achieve?
The Stop Hate for Profit website offers a clear indication of what the Facebook boycott aims to achieve. The organisation is calling upon businesses to “hit pause on hate” by pausing their Facebook Ad campaigns to show the network that it should pay more attention to the calls of its customers and users.
Here’s the message on the organisation’s homepage:
What would you do with $70 billion?
We know what Facebook did.
They allowed incitement to violence against protesters fighting for racial justice in America in the wake of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks and so many others.
They named Breitbart News a “trusted news source” and made The Daily Caller a “fact checker” despite both publications having records of working with known white nationalists.
They turned a blind eye to blatant voter suppression on their platform.
Could they protect and support Black users? Could they call out Holocaust denial as hate? Could they help get out the vote?
They absolutely could. But they are actively choosing not to do so.
99% of Facebook’s $70 billion is made through advertising.
Who will advertisers stand with?
Let’s send Facebook a powerful message: Your profits will never be worth promoting hate, bigotry, racism, antisemitism and violence.
Please join us.
The website also lists a series of recommended next steps for Facebook to take. The organisation wants the network to hold advertisers and account holders accountable for the messages they promote by creating an expert team that’s capable of detecting posts that promote hate crims and discrimination.
It also wants the network to actively “remove public and private groups focused on white supremacy, militia, antisemitism, violent conspiracies, Holocaust denialism, vaccine misinformation, and climate denialism.”
You can read the full list of recommended next steps here.
How has Facebook responded to the boycott and calls for change?
It’s fair to say that Facebook hasn’t responded as quickly or comprehensively as Stop Hate for Profit, its partners and other organisations supporting the boycott would have liked. That said, over the past few days, the network has committed to making a number of key changes.
At the end of last week, Facebook announced that it will start to label “potentially harmful” posts that aren’t removed.
On June 30, Facebook also agreed to an independent audit of its controls against hate speech – one of the next step recommendations proposed by Stop Hate for Profit. On the same day, Facebook removed hundreds of accounts and groups associated with a far-right movement known as “boogaloo” that has been linked with violence and the disruption of peaceful protests around the US.
So the network is responding to calls for change but many argue it has been slow to respond and there’s still a long list of demands that haven’t been met.
Meanwhile, Facebook says any recent action has nothing to do with pressure placed on it by advertisers or social movements.
Could this boycott seriously hurt Facebook?
With the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue coming from advertising, any major boycott threatens to hurt the network financially – the question is, how much? Obviously, big-name brands tend to spend more than smaller advertisers so the collective hit of a major boycott will be significant.
Significant but probably not critical.
According to a report from CNN Business, the highest-spending 100 brands on Facebook accounted for around £3.7bn last year – or around 6% of the platform’s total ad revenue. Which means the majority of Facebook’s revenue comes from the millions of small and medium-size companies/advertisers that pay for ads every single month.
The vast majority of which haven’t signed up to the boycott.
Aside from that, the businesses that have signed up to the boycott have only committed to pausing their ad spend for the month of July – so the end-of-year report isn’t likely to suffer a great deal.
In fact, the reduced spending of small and medium-sized businesses due to the coronavirus outbreak will cause far more financial damage than this boycott.
That being said, the real damage might not be the financial implications of the boycott at all. The bigger issue could be the damage caused to the networks already-struggling public image as the conversation surrounding its action against hate speech continues. If this is reflected in a significant drop in user numbers, the effectiveness of its advertising platform suffers.
Should smaller businesses be worried about the boycott?
For a lot of smaller businesses, Facebook provides a crucial marketing channel for reaching new customers. As CNBC explains, Facebook remains one of the most efficient and cost-effective advertising channels for businesses with Sky reiterating the point that many businesses simply can’t afford to boycott the platform for 30 days.
Ironically, the businesses that can least afford to boycott Facebook are the ones who collectively spend the most money on the platform.
If smaller businesses are worried about this boycott killing off their most important marketing channel, they can rest assured that this is highly unlikely. However, it’s never healthy for a business to be over-reliant on a single channel and the advice would always be to diversify as much as possible – so now might be the ideal time to explore this further.
Another concern might be how the boycott will affect CPCs and the overall cost of advertising on Facebook but less competition should theoretically mean lower CPCs, in anything – although any difference would be barely noticeable.
Also, keep in mind that Facebook will be able to increase the presence of ads in feeds to compensate for the boycott, pushing up the potential total spend of advertisers still using the platform in July. Twitter has taken a similar approach to compensate for reduced ad spend as a result of the coronavirus outbreak – as well as taking measures to tackle potentially harmful content on its platform.
If you need help with adapting your social media strategy in these difficult times or want to diversify your platforms to become less reliant on Facebook, you can speak to our advertising team by calling our advertising team on 0161 870 2580 or send us your questions on Twitter.