You may have heard that recently, in response to announcements by Facebook waiving responsibility to censor hate speech on the platform, advertisers have organized a boycott and a hashtag called Stop Hate for Profit. Led by the Anti-Defamation League, the NAACP, Sleeping Giants, Color of Change, Free Press and Common Sense, the movement calls for boycotting Facebook advertising for the month of July or until Facebook takes measures in “dealing with rampant hate and harassment, (where) the platform continues to come up short.”
The boycott extends to all Facebook properties including Instagram and WhatsApp.
While Facebook has taken measures to ensure more advertising accountability and data security since the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2016, the organizers maintain that the company has come up short in fact checking, removing content containing blatant lies and stemming online harassment. COVID-19 has worsened these endemic issues as staff who used to manually vet content have been furloughed.
So how does this affect your shopping center? The ADL and Stop Hate for Profits maintain that advertising on the Facebook platform is potentially harmful, as your messaging may be displayed adjacent to hateful content. Companies that spend millions of dollars on the Facebook platform have already joined the movement. Verizon, Patagonia, The North Face, Coca Cola, Pepsi, Honda and 160 others have joined the movement. Unilever has all suspended advertising on the platform “at least” until the end of 2020.
Immediate impacts from the boycott were a decline in Facebook stock price by over 8% or $56 billion in market capitalization. As the company scrambles to respond with additional measures to control hate speech, advertisers sit back and wait for action.
Should your organization choose to suspend advertising on the Facebook platform, rest assured PlaceWise can help you implement this. Our unique position as a leader in digital advertising for shopping centers leaves us with a host of other advertising channels, including display ads on vetted third party websites and mobile applications or streaming audio on the Spotify platform. We can also help with ads, sponsored filters and lenses on SnapChat as well as streaming video on YouTube or paid search listings and display ads on Google.
If you’re looking to reach your shoppers outside of social media or the web, we have partnerships connecting us to thousands of digital billboards, point of sale screens and connected TVs across the US.
Please feel free to reach out to your account manager or sales representative with any questions or concerns regarding Facebook advertising during these times.