Page 24 - ARUBA TODAY

A24 TECHNOLOGY
Monday 30 april 2018

Facebook advertisers shrug off its privacy scandal

By MAE ANDERSON GBH Insights analyst Daniel
AP Technology Writer Ives thinks that about 3 per-
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — cent of Facebook’s total
Facebook’s troubles with advertising revenue — be-
Russian election meddlers , tween $1 billion and $2 bil-
“fake news “ and misused lion annually — is “at risk.”
data have dominated According to GBH’s adver-
headlines globally. tiser checks and consumer
But they don’t seem to be surveys, about 15 percent
affecting Facebook’s bot- of FB users have scaled
tom line, so far, as advertis- back on using the service.
ers continue to flock to the BMO research analyst Dan
service in droves. Salmon thinks there is one
Facebook’s revenue, privacy issue that might
which largely derives from give advertisers pause:
ads, soared 49 percent to Facebook’s decision in
$12 billion in the first three March to stop working with
months of the year, the third-party data collectors .
company announced on That might be a good pub-
Wednesday. Profit jumped lic relations move, he said,
63 percent to $5 billion. but it’s a big change for
And despite a buzzy advertisers.
“DeleteFacebook” online After conversations with
campaign, both daily and ad agencies and ad tech
monthly user numbers in- In this March 28, 2018, file photo, visitors take photos in front of the Facebook logo at the company’s companies, Salmon be-
creased. More than 1.45 headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook reports earnings Wednesday, April 25. lieves some will see a de-
billion people check Face- Associated Press cline in the profitability of
book at least once a day, eMarketer. which gets a whopping 98 4C chief marketing officer their ads as a result of the
a 13 percent increase from What makes Facebook is percent of its revenue from Aaron Goldman said that change. But he doesn’t
a year earlier. so attractive to advertisers? digital ads. as long as data continues expect a major impact on
Facebook is the second It’s the very data at the But advertisers have to be a key part of adver- Facebook revenue.
largest digital publisher in center of its recent privacy shrugged off the scandals tisers’ plans, they’re unlikely Overall, Facebook digital
the world, behind Google. scandal. Advertisers rely on in the aggregate. In fact, to leave Facebook be- ad revenue overall is surg-
It raked in $39.94 billion in the reams of data Face- according to one digital cause of the quality of its ing, but growth is slowing
2017 — about 17 percent book collects on its 2.2 bil- media planning and buy- data. down. Ad revenues rose 49
of total online ad spend- lion users to specifically tar- ing company, ad spending “While privacy and security percent in 2017, but that’s
ing, according to data firm get their ads — baby sham- has been up. are very serious issues that down from 57 percent
poo to someone who is like- The company, 4C, tracks Facebook is rightly focusing growth in 2016, according
ly a new mom, for example $250 million in actual on, as long as the return-on- to eMarketer, which tallies
— thus increasing the value spending from more than investment is there, adver- revenue from company
of their ad spending. 1,000 brands that use its tisers won’t stop investing in reports and other sourc-
But Facebook has been tools to buy ads. Accord- Facebook altogether,” he es. And in 2018, revenue
facing backlash about how ing to its data, over the said. growth is expected to slow
it uses that data since news two weeks in March after Brian Wieser, a senior re- even further to 22 percent.
broke in March that the the Cambridge Analytica search analyst for adver- After years of unfettered
Trump-linked data-mining news broke, ad spending tising at Pivotal Research spending on digital ads,
firm Cambridge Analytica increased 7 percent and Group, said his conversa- some big advertisers have
had gained information on 14.5 percent, respectively. tions with marketers indi- begun to rethink their
up to 87 million users. And for the first quarter, cate none have plans to spending plans. P&G, the
Since the story broke, there which ended March 30, cut ads from Facebook so world’s biggest advertiser,
have been some rumblings advertising spending rose far. for example, cut $200 mil-
that advertisers would flee 62 percent, 4C said. “Most are disturbed at an lion out of its digital ad
the platform. A few compa- Of course, $250 million is a individual level with what spending in 2017 and re-
nies, including the German drop in the bucket com- happened, but there’s invested it in more tradi-
bank Commerzbank and pared to Facebook’s nothing that made Face- tional formats like TV ads.
speaker-maker Sonos, tem- $39.94 billion in 2017 adver- book overly toxic — yet,” Unilever, the second-big-
porarily paused their ads. If tising revenue. But the 4C he said. gest consumer packaged
other brands had followed, numbers give some indica- Some analysts are model- goods company has also
that would have been a tion of how smaller brands ing slightly less rosy takes said it is evaluating its ad
big problem for Facebook, are behaving. going forward, however. spending.q