A couple of days ago I was watching “The Offer” on Paramount+, great show that I highly recommend, and during one of the ad breaks I was of course on my phone but something caught my ear. An ad with a catchy song, so I started paying attention (side note, we need to bring back jingles in a big way). The characters in the ad are singing along, and it took me a second to register that they were telling the viewer of how discovering a new small business changed their lives. A kaleidoscope of fantastical things start happening on screen as the world around these characters transforms. I was digging it, although it was dragging a bit, and then this lyric came up:
Boundless, endless, lit, infinite possibilities, I’m down!
A world where personalized ads help good ideas get found!
They change our lives (Slightly, they make honey!)
Wait a minute, this ad is about… personalized ads? The ad closes with this message:
Good ideas deserve to be found.
Personalized ads help you find them.
Who could poss… oh, it’s an ad by Facebook, I mean, Meta. See for yourself:
I turned to my wife with eyes wide open ready to discuss this really weird ad we’d just seen, but she, a school teacher who couldn’t care less about ads, was on Instagram and hadn’t seen it. So I turned back around and continued enjoying The Offer, but a bug had been planted in my brain, an ad about ads, from Meta.
Why run an ads to advertise ads?
My first reaction was to scoff at this ad, most of Meta’s ads have been well made but didn’t resonate with me at all as I’m not at all a fan of their brand.
From their campaign to pass the buck of making the internet a safer place to the Government:
To their weird and mostly laughed at Metaverse ad where a group of clearly stoned kids start tripping while looking at a painting:
And their admittedly pretty good ads “Take on anything with Facebook Groups”, which, from what I can tell, is one of the few reasons people still visit the platform:
A mixed bag from a brand that a lot of people love to hate, but many more still love to use, or at least can’t stop using. A brand that has been in the spotlight for the past 6 years for their many blunders, but mainly for their entire business model being predicated on siphoning consumer data from every possible corner of the internet. A business model that was challenged, not without their own business interests at heart, by Apple a couple of years ago with the launch of IDFA.
Apple’s Privacy crusade, motivated by revenue IMHO not goodness of their heart, dealt Meta a blow to the tune of a $10B cut in their stock price. A lot of people rejoiced that someone was finally standing up to Meta’s greed and role as surveillance capitalism’s evil knight in shining armor. Something no government had been able to do before, Apple had cut off Meta’s tentacles from their customer’s phones, a victory for consumer privacy!
Others saw this and lamented the impact on small business who are entirely dependent on Facebook and Instagram ads. Taking away their ability to precisely target niche audiences was going to be a death sentence for many of them and their DTC business model. Facebook raised the alarm, in an effort to make themselves the good guy and Apple the bad guy. I haven’t been able to find any clear evidence of small businesses going bankrupt because of Apple’s decision, but there is plenty of evidence that this had a huge impact on performance advertising across the board. Shopify, once the golden child of e-commerce, has seen its stock slide down from its Pandemic high by 70%:
While this isn’t entirely attributable to Apple and IDFA, many believe it played a significant role. I’d argue that most of this is what other brands like Netflix are suffering, we’re going back outside after 2ish years shut at home bingeing shows and buying things online. Others will also question the validity of a business if their entire model was based on Facebook ads and they went under after IDFA was introduced.
To summarize, Meta’s revenue is almost entirely based on advertising, billions of dollars from millions of brands who rely on their ability to deliver personalized ads. Apple decided to disrupt this model, to some degree, with IDFA and with a massive PR/Advertising campaign positioning them as a champion for Privacy and Meta as the enemy of consumers. This battle has played out on many different fields, from congressional hearings to blog posts, but winning the minds of consumers seems to have become a critical piece for both brands.
So here we are, Meta advertising the value of personalized ads to consumers. Something I never thought I would see in my career. Industry bodies have promoted advertising before, but this is on a whole different level, and it’s built on an insight that I believe to be true: people do discover new products and brands thanks to ads on Instagram and Facebook that are tailored to their interests. I’ve seen this happen again and again, I’ve done it myself, my wife is an avid shopper of what I like to call “Insta brands”. The real question is, how much data do you really need to target consumers effectively? I worked in Media agencies for most of my career, until 2021, we all drank a lot of Kool-aid around data and targeting but I’ve been doubting how far our industry took it for quite some time.
So, who is this ad for? If it just another part of the ongoing PR battle between Meta and Apple? Is it aimed at Marketers like myself to remind us of how good their ads are at driving sales? Is it aimed at consumers to remind them that giving up a little personal data is worth it to discover amazing brands on Instagram? Probably all three, but what does it actually accomplish?
Why I’m Skeptical.
It’s an ad about ads, from Meta, a company that is infamous for tracking every single thing you do online to make money. A company that in many ways, direct and indirect, bears a big responsibility for the state the Advertising industry is in (narrator: not a good one). It’s an ad that while built on a true and interesting insight is trying to turn data driven ads into a USP for their platforms, something I’m not sure is ever going to land with consumers. It’s also trying to create this imaginary wonderful world of discovery while in the real world Instagram has turned into a messy and spammy mix of ads and suggested content many are growing tired of.
Why I’m Optimistic.
I’m not really… but I do find the strategy interesting. People hate ads, mainly because we’ve stopped making good ones a long time ago and started jamming them in every possible environment we could find. There is truth to Meta’s claim, ads are an important way for consumers to discover products and brands they end up enjoying. Does advertising need an advertising campaign to change people’s opinions on our industry? I don’t think so. We need to make better ads, stop being obsessed with data the way Meta is, and go back to entertaining consumers, helping them discover products and brands. This ad probably won’t do much, but it has reminded me that it’s on us to fix our industry, we can’t hope Meta does it for us.