Tag Archives: #Facebook

“You win some, you lose some …”

Reading Time: 3 minutes

… a quote taken from the post published by Ice Cube on Twitter in 2014.

Business, Chart, Graph, Graphic, Diagram, Success
Simplified Pixabay License
https://pixabay.com/pl/service/license/.
Accessed: 07-02-2022.

On the one hand it’s an article about Meta (new “mother” of Facebook portal) and its lose in value – more than 250 bn dollars down, on the other hand, in bigger picture, about the changes in social media market that can been observed recently.

Let’s start with facts.

Financial Times reports: “Investors wiped more than $220bn from the market valuation of Facebook owner Meta as it warned that users were spending more time on newer rivals such as ByteDance’s TikTok.” You can say: it’s quite normal situation. Little did we know, whether Mr. Cube’s post was about stock fluctuations, probably not, but as it has been said, sometimes share price go up and at other times they go down. We have to use to it.

More interesting (and crucial) is question regarding reason for that. On the market there are only few things that are accidental. This case is not one of such things. Let us think:  What shareholders / analytics guys, economists and other people that have impact on the market, are so afraid of regarding FB? Hard to say, but in this social media business we, the people, aren’t very loyal. So we are moving from one portal to another. The quicker apps like TikTok are growing, the more worried about the condition of Mata are the its share holders and others group of interest.

“People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly – Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive, quoted by Financial Times in the mentioned article.

Sure thing, our world isn’t “monolith” anymore. There isn’t only FB (as it used to be in the past) being role model as a social platform and nothing more. Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok to mentioned the most well-known platforms. But out of three rivals of FB the last is the most dangerous (because of its potential to growth and the ability to attract, especially, young people). The youngers do enjoy posting “funny” (some of the them more / some – less) short films. In the meantime FB is a concerned by the this age group as “archaic tool for the elders”. No doubt it easy to find Your parents on FB, some Grandparents are to found on the platform too.

I do believe FB will be nr 1 (at least in the near future) social media platform, bringing people together. Simultaneously, I were responsible for FB, I would implement changes faster in order to adopt to new conditions – social awareness regarding data privacy policy. As I observe actions made by FB I am still having the feeling this is old fashioned organization which hasn’t learned by its own mistakes. Of course, Cambridge Analytica has impacted the FB’s altitude towards “our” data. But still the FB (Mata) business model is still based on ads. And as we know well. Ads depend on information (user’s tracking etc.). So I do think, that eventually FB has to change its philosophy in order to keep the users. Otherwise, according to me its future would be not so bright.

The content sources:

https://on.ft.com/3Gpoafx. Accessed: 04-02-2022.

https://twitter.com/icecube/status/530819499344535552. Accessed: 04-02-2022.

The image source:

https://pixabay.com/pl/illustrations/business-chart-graph-graphic-5475658/. Accessed: 07-02-2022.

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Google and Facebook’s Secret Deal

Reading Time: 3 minutes

In 2017 Facebook tested a new way of selling online ads, which was a huge threat for Google’s domination in this market. This led Google to offer Facebook a secret deal… 

Ujawniono tajną umowę Facebooka z Google, pozwalającą całkowicie dominować nad reklamami

Bad reputation

Both Facebook and Google have already been accused of violation of antitrust law many times in the past. Quite recent court cases include one form October 20, 2020, when The US Department of Justice with 11 state Attorneys General filed a civil antitrust lawsuit claiming that Google “unlawfully maintain monopoly through anticompetitive and exclusionary harms” – that referred to various operations in the search and search advertising markets, and one from December 9, 2020 when Facebook has been sued by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) for maintaining a “years-long course of anticompetitive conduct” in social networking which results in customers having fewer choices (if any) and deprives advertisers of benefits of competition. 

Secret deal

Facebook’s attempts to establish a new way of online advertising in 2017 have not been completed, but, interestingly, they instead, in 2018, joined an alliance of companies doing the same, but with the help of Google. This agreement between Facebook and Google is a part of further mentioned court case form October, 2020 and was called by the state attorneys general illegal price-fixing deal. The New York Times found out that, according to executives of 6 out of 20 partners in the alliance, Facebook was given special terms of contract resulting in a significant advantage over the other companies. However, Google and Facebook deny to these reports and even state that deals like that “help increase competition in ad auctions” (Christopher Sgro, Facebook’s spokesman). This mysterious agreement is believed to be coded as Jedi Blue inside the companies.

What is it exactly about?

Part of the online advertising involved in the deal is called programmatic advertising – process of automatically buying and selling digital advertising space. Basically, when a user is clicking a link to a website, there is a bid for ads that will show up. Google, having one of the most dominant ad exchanges, often directed straight to their own exchange. That is why a method of header bidding was developed which mixed exchanges from different platforms at once, which resulted in bigger competition and better prices. It is no surprise that Google did not “like” it and developed yet another method – open bidding. It enables exchanges other than Google’s at the same time, but Google takes fee for every winning bid. Facebook is one of the biggest ad buyers, so its joining Google’s alliance and having extra conditions is worrying for the whole industry. Those advantages included: speed advantages, direct billing relationships with the ad sites and better understanding of who would be shown the ads. 

Jedi Blue can be used to support lawsuits that have already been initiated against Facebook and Google as well as to trigger new ones. This case is a clear example of why tech giants need more law regulations. 

Sources:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-google-facebook-ad-deal-at-the-heart-of-a-price-fixing-lawsuit-11609254758
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2020/12/ftc-sues-facebook-illegal-monopolization
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-monopolist-google-violating-antitrust-laws
https://www.goprogrammatic.com/what-is-programmatic-ad-buying-in-2019/
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