You may have noticed that your personal Facebook feed contains a higher-than-usual volume of ads and “suggested content” posts of late. This is a direct result of Facebook’s strategy to increase its ad revenues.
Advertisers pay Facebook for a.) the number of times an ad is shown, and b.) the number of times an ad is clicked. (I’ve run many Facebook ads myself in the past, so I do know what I’m talking about here.)
Facebook’s current business plan, apparently, is to push out as many ads as possible, to as many users as possible. Never mind the all-important factor of ad relevancy.
Case-in-point: a conspicuous number of ads from Bikini Beans Coffee, a Tempe, Arizona-based company, have been appearing in my personal Facebook feed in recent weeks.
As the name suggests, all of the baristas at Bikini Beans Coffee are lithe young women in bikinis. If the ads are any indication, they are all quite attractive.
I’ve also perused the Bikini Beans Coffee menu. The company’s drink selection looks promising, with only a small premium added for the jollies associated with being served by half-naked young women.
But why run such ads to me, in particular, among all the 243.5 million Facebook users in the United States?
Well, first of all, I’m a middle-aged man. A middle-aged man’s brain is known to turn to mush when a scantily clad, attractive young woman is placed before him. That is an established fact. Middle-aged men often have a significant disposable income. When their brains turn to mush, they open their wallets.
Also, I’m a coffee connoisseur. I regularly research different kinds of coffee online.
But Mark Zuckerberg is still ripping off Bikini Beans Coffee. Why?
As I mentioned, Bikini Beans Coffee is based in Tempe, Arizona. The company has five locations. All of them are somewhere in Arizona, mostly near Phoenix.
I, on the other hand, am in Cincinnati, Ohio.
I’m unlikely to drive 26 hours (1,800 miles) for a cup of coffee, even if bikini-clad coeds are involved. My brain might turn to mush in front of attractive young women, but that form of manipulation has its limits.
I haven’t even contemplated going to Arizona, in fact. This means that none of my search activity, either on Facebook or elsewhere online, would suggest that I will be in Arizona anytime in the near future.
Facebook, therefore, is more or less throwing advertisers’ spaghetti at the wall. Bikini Beans Coffee has been paying good money to show me photos of its nubile, skimpily-attired baristas. That exposure (no pun intended) isn’t free.
This is why I rarely run Facebook ads for my own business anymore.
Facebook nowadays is a mess. Facebook has been battered in recent years, by privacy concerns and iOS updates that have undermined its tracking abilities.
The social media landscape has become more crowded and competitive, too; and this is a battle that Facebook is mostly losing. As most of you will know, young people have been abandoning Facebook for TikTok. Older Facebook users are spending less time on the site. Many older users (some of my friends included) have deleted their Facebook accounts in recent years.
This means fewer and fewer opportunities to show ads. As a result, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) is growing desperate. More shots in the dark, more spaghetti thrown against the wall.
If you’re running ads on Facebook, Meta is playing ever more random games of chance—not with their money, but with yours.
-ET