Martin Sorrell, founder of the world’s largest advertising and PR group WPP, said the Facebook ad boycott did not make a big impact.
In June, advertisers announced a July Facebook ad pause , in response to a call from the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Some said they only halted in July, others said it lasted the year. More than 1,000 organizations and companies have joined a boycott hoping to pressure Facebook to take more stricter measures to prevent the spread of hate speech and misleading information. HP, Verizon, Coca-Cola… are among these.
However, Mr. Sorrell said that Facebook shows no signs of slowing down. What they called a “boycott” had only a very small impact, far behind everyone’s forecasts. The British businessman shared that a boycott was not a reasonable solution to Facebook.
According to the WPP founder, brands should express their concerns to Facebook in private rather than in a public confrontation. “They have 35,000 content curators. They removed some extreme groups and changed the algorithm.
In contrast to Sorrell, the organization group #StopHateForProfit described the campaign’s success as “unmixable,” forcing the public to evaluate Facebook’s profound harm to the community and democracy – something not yet. there was precedent.
On August 11, the team released Facebook’s assessment of progress against the group’s recommendations. They conclude that social media is not trying to solve the four core issues and not taking meaningful action in the other four areas. At the end of July, Facebook admitted that the boycott had affected second-quarter revenue, but predicts that ad revenue will continue to increase in the third quarter.
