Think Facebook Is Important To Advertisers? Think Again

Facebook’s post-IPO status has certainly proved to be a turbulent one. From the uncertainly of the offering, to large companies like General Motors saying that Facebook ads would be ineffective (though new talks have emerged), the first half of 2012 has proved to be a challenge for the social media giant. Now other advertisers have put their two cents in, and the story doesn’t look much different. A new statistic released today by 33Across has shown that eighty percent of advertisers believe that there are more important opportunities on the web than Facebook.

This is a rather large change compared to stats that existed before the IPO. According to Venture Beat, additional numbers show that this statistic is up 23% compared to three months ago. The events of the IPO certainly played a large effect on advertisers confidence in their involvement with Facebook, which always seemed left to be questioned as it was. Further reports show that five times as many agencies (of the 2,200 surveyed by 33Across) plan on making reductions to their budget that is devoted to Facebook.

Advertising on Facebook never seemed to really mobilize to the level that the network was hoping for, with many figures in the industry that no revenue could come in as a result. The most highly publicized event was when General Motors pulled all of their ads from Facebook, but it wasn’t totally because of their insistance that ads don’t work. GM however seems to be running back to Facebook, after further news of new ad offerings.

Apart from GM, the belief has been continuously assigned to the stance of other companies – a fact that has been made even more clear today. Facebook has aimed to correct the weak impression that advertisers have on Facebook, with the implementation of Facebook Ad Exchange, which seeks to use demand-side platforms (DSP) in third party websites to get more targeted ads on Facebook towards users. This is still in beta testing, but could potentially alter the perspective of ad effectiveness on the social network.

Facebook still has a lot to figure out if they want more success with advertisers, but that depends on how fast the smoke clears after the shaky IPO, or if it gets to clear at all.