Social Media Advertising and marketing Is a Joke - It is Time We Acknowledge It

The very best factor that at any time took place to social media marketing and advertising was the hacking of the 2016 US election of Donal Trump by the Russians. Why? Since it laid bare what a lot of in social media advertising and marketing has recognized for a lengthy, extended time: that social media platforms are a joke, their valuations are based on imaginary end users, and their integrity lies someplace among Lucifer and that dude who eats people's faces in the movies.

For marketing and advertising consultants this kind of as myself, recommending existing social platforms such as Fb, Twitter, and Instagram has been progressively difficult, because -really frankly- several of us don't believe in the metrics.

And why must we? Facebook isn't going to.

⁠smm panel  is from Facebook's 2017 SEC submitting (emphasis mine):

The quantities for our key metrics, which incorporate our every day active consumers (DAUs), monthly active users (MAUs), and common earnings per person (ARPU), are calculated making use of inside company information based mostly on the exercise of consumer accounts. Although these figures are based on what we think to be affordable estimates of our user foundation for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent problems in measuring usage of our products across large on-line and cell populations close to the planet.
The biggest info management firm in the globe states it isn't going to truly know if its numbers are accurate. Estimates? What marketing professional needs estimated results right after the fact?

It gets worse. Emphasis mine:

In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that copy accounts could have represented approximately 10% of our globally MAUs. We imagine the share of duplicate accounts is meaningfully larger in building marketplaces this sort of as India, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as in comparison to a lot more created markets. In the fourth quarter of 2017, we estimate that fake accounts may have represented about 3-four% of our globally MAUs.
Allow that sink in. Facebook is admitting that "about" ten% of its monthly energetic consumers are faux. Curiously, they never mention what percentage of their day-to-day active users are phony.

And that's the difficulty with social media. You will not know what is real and what is actually fake any more.

Social media has not been real for a even though.

As entrepreneurs and advertisers, we delight ourselves on accuracy. In the olden times of marketing and advertising and advertising, we obsessed over rating figures of tv shows, readership for print promotions, and delivery good results charges for direct mail.

In all cases, the platforms of the day have been heavily audited. You realized, with truthful certainty, was the audiences have been for any specific medium or channel because there was typically a level of overview somewhere for the figures.

Conventional media these kinds of as radio, Tv set, and print had been about prolonged ample that there had been thousands of circumstance reports 1 could examine the accomplishment or failures of person strategies. Because these mediums were element of the public document, it was effortless to operate backward to see what combine of media and price range worked and what did not.

As an market, we could swiftly establish benchmarks for achievement - not just dependent on our personal encounters- but in the collective ordeals of quite clear strategies laid bare for every person to dissect.

Nicely, that all went out the window with social media.

Fb, Twitter, and Instagram's numbers have been often a joke.

In times of yore, company valuation was based on revenues, assets, and human cash, and performance.

That all altered when an individual came up with the concept of "everyday energetic consumers."

The race to acquire customers grew to become the driving drive for social media platforms in a way that we have never ever noticed ahead of. Now, the obsession with user expansion opened the doorway to promoting and marketing fraud on a scale that just was not possible beforehand.

Let's get some thing clear: any platform that allows for folks to generate 1000's of bogus profiles so other folks can acquire likes, followers, retweets, or shares is poisonous to advertisers and brands alike.

Now, I recognize that the phrase "permits" is carrying out a great deal of function in that sentence, so enable me increase a bit what I indicate.

I do not believe I will get many arguments when I say that -irrespective of what I consider of them- the most successful social media platforms on the earth are also some of the most refined technological enterprises on the earth. They have -arguably- some of the greatest AI about, as their entire business types revolve around getting in a position to crunch quantities, facts, and obscure pieces of info tens of millions of times a 2nd.

They are also enormous businesses, with an army of lawyers and IP bulldogs waiting to shield their brand against any hostile outdoors forces.

So explain to me, how is it, that even soon after all we have seen in the news people can nevertheless buy Fb likes, or Twitter followers, or Instagram supporters?

The purpose: it was often a scam. And we acquired conned alongside with absolutely everyone else.

If your company is valued on your quantity of users and the exercise of these end users on your platform, what do you care if they are phony or not? If you did, you would employ an armada of auditors to guarantee the integrity of your userbase. I will not believe they at any time did and will never ever do this.