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Russell Johnston
Adam Padgett
April 9, 2014
ENGL 1102

Critical Analysis of Facebook Filtering and the Financial Implications of Post Boosting

The largest trend in online business is social media, and for good reason. Recent reports
show that social media marketing has boosted the sales revenue of various businesses throughout
all types of markets.(Adobe) This rapidly growing source of revenue has made social media
platforms, like Facebook and Twitter, attractive toward which one could target ad campaigns. In
this paper, it will be shown that as more companies move money into promoting ad campaigns
on social media platforms, there will be stiffer competition for screen space on a given persons
Facebook Wall. In these cases, it will be shown that Facebook has the competitive advantage to
leverage any and all money possible through a new policy called post promotion and indirectly
through filtering. Here we look to shine light on how Facebooks new policies work, not only for
their own gain, but at the cost of user experience and at the expense of trusting small business
owners.
Adobe has done an excellent job compiling an extensive list of data that is relevant to the
topic of ad revenue on social media platforms, and thus I feel compelled to list a few of them. In
the 4
th
quarter of the last fiscal year, Facebook reported nearly 1.2 billion, unique, and active
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users on their website. Needless to say, this number alone makes Facebook the prime
environment for ad campaigns. Adobe states themselves in their Digit Index report, Social media
channels are picking up steam and have their eyes on capturing a greater proportion of search
dollars. The real race will not be between social media channels, but between marketers
allocation of dollars across search, display, and social. Social media, however, risks alienating
users while it courts marketers. While the benefits of this model are easily shown for businesses
in the form of large marketing audiences, the manner in which Facebook makes money is less
clear. This is where the concept of post promotion becomes necessary. (Adobe)
At its core, post promotion is a means by which Facebook has allowed businesses to pay
more, in order to have its posts artificially boosted to reach more people. (Facebook1) At face
value, this seems like a reasonable business practice. However, if we look deeper, its easy to see
how a system where money is allowed to dictate how popular a post is, will always
disproportionately benefit wealthier businesses. Large corporations can use marketing budgets to
strong-arm smaller corporations out of a Facebook users wall. It is important to note that this
can occur, even if the user would rather have seen the smaller businesses post. This occurs for
several reasons, first of which lies in the core principles of the Facebook filter. The average
Facebook user simply has too many friends and too much content to peruse during a single
sitting. To help alleviate any sense that the average user might feel overwhelmed, Facebook has
performed a type of filtering in the background. (Facebook PR) Instead of receiving posts from
all of your friends on your wall, Facebook uses algorithms to decide what you want to see before
you see it. Although this filtering process may seem necessary, some journalists and researchers
have called the practice into question. Ryan Holiday of the New York Observer writes, Its no
conspiracy. Facebook acknowledged it as recently as last week: messages now reach, on average,
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just 15 percent of an accounts fans. In a wonderful coincidence, Facebook has rolled out a
solution [filtering] for this problem: Pay them for better access. (Holiday)
Facebook has put themselves in the prime position to leverage their user base into paying
them for what they used to have for free. To put it simply, before the post promotion system was
used, Facebook pages would have a reach of the whole user base (minus the default filtering
mechanism). Since the introduction of post promotion however, the base reach of a post for
any given Fan page reaches roughly 12% of users. Only 12% of the people who Like a business,
band, singer, or group, will actually see a post from that business. Dangerous Minds is a popular
blog that covers topics ranging from the newest music albums to cellphone reviews. Richard
Metzer, a writer for Dangerous Minds, describes the financial burden that the Facebook post
promotion system has put his site under. Metzer writes, We post seven days a week, that would
be about $14,000 per week, $56,000 per month a grand total of $672,000 for what we got for
free before Facebook started turning the traffic down in Spring of this year. (Metzer) What
Metzer is describing here is the amount of money needed to reach the same level of people
before the post promotion update. Dangerous Minds is a typical active blog; they also have an
active user base. In the thousands of cases like Dangerous Minds, Facebook has inhibited a Fan
page owners ability to reach the people who have demonstrated interest in a topic through the
Like button. Earlier a statement was made that the post promotion system does not help
businesses, but it actually hurts them in a very noticeable way. The case of Dangerous Minds is
just one of the many examples where the post promotion system has created an uneven playing
field where businesses that are capable of moving more money into marketing budgets will
prosper. It follows from that then, that small businesses will not benefit under these conditions.
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Post Promotion does not simply boost posts for users within a fan base on a Facebook
page. Companies and artists can boost their posts to users who are not even interested in the
topic. In a way, the post promotion system has been a new, and more effective way to promote a
line of thinking, or even push a product. (Facebook2) Studies by leading marketing researchers
have found that this model is incredibly effective at increasing user Click-through-Rates (the
chances of a user clicking an ad), and keeping the CPC (Cost-per-Click) even year over year.
Adobes Social Intelligence Report describes the details on the effectiveness of Facebooks
post promotion program, and more importantly, the effectiveness of ads on social media sites. It
is becoming nearly essential for businesses to use social media as an advertising platform or they
risk losing out on large amount of revenue. In the current business market, that can mean the
difference between a successful or failing company. Adobe states in the Social Intelligence
Report, Most advertisers havent experimented with paid social yet. With CTRs up and costs
remaining low, advertisers should start using paid social or use it more often. (Adobe)
So with all of these benefits and cost opportunities for businesses, why is there still a
consensus that Facebooks new filtering system has hurt small businesses more than it has
helped? The answer lies in the distinction between large and small businesses. Rather, the answer
lies in the distinction between those who have large marketing budgets, and those who dont. In
the case of Dangerous Minds, they did not have a large enough budget to afford to boost their
posts in the range for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This lack of funding cost them valuable
screen space on their readers computers. However, if a company such as Microsoft were to
release a new software line, they would be able to advertise to their entire user base and more.
This is because Microsoft has a large enough marketing team to boost important posts to 100%
when needed. Naturally, this creates an uneven playing field for those who have smaller budgets
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than those at the top. This unfair system only serves to widen the gap between large and small to
medium sized businesses. In these cases, Facebook has created a system that has made it
disproportionately harder for small to medium sized businesses to succeed in an environment
where large businesses can afford to reach an unlimited amount of people. This, along with the
increased click through rates stated above, make it even harder than ever for small businesses to
succeed in the modern marketing field. This is even more compounded by the loss in money for
businesses who worked hard to grow their fan base, before the post promotion update. In these
cases, the hard work which was used to grow their viewership has all but gone to waste. This not
only hurts the company in time wasted, but also in the loss of marketing dollars used to gain
followers on Facebook.
In conclusion, we find that as Facebook continues to grow, the organic reach of John
Does post will continue to reach smaller and smaller percentages for his fan base. (Pegoraro) As
this occurs, large businesses who can afford to fully utilize the post promotion tool will continue
to reach larger audiences as Facebook itself grows. (Facebook PR) It can only because expected
that small businesses will be at a distinct disadvantage under this system. However, despite the
shortcomings of this system when it pertains to small businesses, Facebook, as shown by
Adobes analysis, has created a very successful and valuable platform for ad campaigns. As
Facebook and Twitter continue to grow in their amount of users, so will the need for companies
to focus more money into advertising budgets.




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Works Cited
Adobe, . "Social Intelligence Report Q4 2013." Adobe Digital Index. Adobe Microsystems, n.d. Web. 9
Apr 2014.
<http://www.cmo.com/content/dam/CMO_Other/ADI/ADI_SocialIntelReport_Q413.pdf>.
Facebook1, . "Boosted Posts."Facebook. Facebook. Web. 12 Mar 2014. <
https://www.facebook.com/business/promoted-posts/>.
Facebook2, . "Promoted Post Success Stories."Facebook. Facebook. Web. 12 Mar 2014. < https://fbcdn-
dragon-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/t39.2365/851565_325469517585050_1513534755_n.pdf
/>.
Pegoraro, Rob. "Facebook News Feed Can Make Friends Dissapear." Washington Post. (2011): n. page.
Web. 12 Mar. 2014.
<http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fasterforward/2011/02/facebook_news_feed_filters_can.html
>.
Szoldra, Paul. "Why Facebook's New Feed changes are bad for users." Slate. (2013): n. page. Web. 11
Mar. 2014.
<http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2014/01/20/veritasium_why_facebook_s_news_fe
ed_changes_are_bad_for_users.html>.
Metzger, Richard. "Facebook, I want my Friends back!."Dangerous Minds. (2009): n. page. Web. 11 Mar.
2014. <http://dangerousminds.net/comments/facebook_i_want_my_friends_back>.
Facebook PR"Generating Results on Facebook." Facebook Public Relations. Facebook, 01 11 2013.
Web. 9 Mar 2014. <https://fbcdn-dragon-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-
prn1/851574_130014300502442_54802750_n.pdf>.