NEWS29 October 2013

Forrester pokes Facebook; Facebook doesn't ‘like’ it

Data analytics North America

US — Facebook has slammed a recent Forrester report, critical of the social network’s marketing business, as “at times illogical and… irresponsible”.

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A spokesman for Facebook said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott’s report, ‘Why Facebook is failing marketers’, is at odds with reality.

“The reality is that Facebook advertising works. That’s why we have more than a million active advertisers including all of the Ad Age 100. And, countless studies have demonstrated the significant return on investment marketers see from Facebook,” the spokesman said (via Business Insider).

Elliott’s report is based on a survey of nearly 400 marketers in the US, UK and Canada. On several measures, including business value achieved, Facebook marketing is ranked below many – if not all – of its main digital marketing competitors.

In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, Elliott said: “Your company focuses too little on the thing marketers want most: driving genuine engagement between companies and their customers. Your sales materials tease marketers with the promise that you’ll help them create such connections. But in reality, you rarely do.

“Everyone who clicks the like button on a brand’s Facebook page volunteers to receive that brand’s messages — but on average, you only show each brand’s posts to 16% of its fans. And while your company upgrades its advertising tools and offerings monthly or more, you’ve done little in the past 18 months to improve your unloved branded page format or the tools that marketers use to manage and measure those pages.”

Elliott also claims that Facebook is failing to properly leverage its “ever-growing cache of social data to target relevant audiences”.

But as Elliott was outlining his criticisms, Adobe was publishing its own report – its first Social Intelligence report, which it plans to publish annually – in which it said that Facebook was becoming “increasingly attractive” to brand marketers, with ad click volume up by 29% year-on-year, ad impressions up 85% and cost per thousand impressions of an ad (CPM) increased by 120%. Adobe also claims that Facebook’s advertising ROI increased by 58% year-on-year.

@RESEARCH LIVE

3 Comments

11 years ago

Yes, facebook has all the ingredients to fail.

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11 years ago

Interesting that Forrester dared to speak out against Facebook - and that the FB spokesman couldn't cite specific stats beyond "we have lots of advertisers". That said, "Your company focuses too little on the thing marketers want" is kinda missing the point. Facebook is primarily a consumer-based site, with 'advertising' (such as it is) as an afterthought. An advertising-first/ consumer-second site would be better for marketers... but struggle to retain a decent user base.

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11 years ago

The little child in the crowd, cried out : "Phooey! The King is naked!" At last Forrester had to come forward and disclose the facts about FB. Indeed a social network can't be an effective and efficient platform for marketing. Face-Booking is like window-shopping where catchy and flashy products put on display, rob the attention of the visiting customers!

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