Nate Elliot critical of facebook advertising

Facebook has a 1.15 billion strong user base. Facebook is also free. Marketers might easily be attracted by such facts. Infact Facebook claims 1 million active advertisers supporting it. Facebook has it made, right?

But Nate Elliot feels strongly that it isn’t so. Infact, Nate Elliot of Forrester Research goes so far as to write in an open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that “Facebook is failing marketers.”

Lets be honest, few people appreciate facebook ads. Few people enjoy looking at advertising attempts to grab eyeballs. A company which has 1.15 billion subscribers should be treating advertisers better. Facebook is supposed to be acing such reports. And it is not. Elephants ought to be able do beat wolves, not let them finish somewhat ahead of themselves.

The idea is that facebook cannot leverage mobile advertising. Most people share lots of data on facebook. Most people do not share lots of data on google plus and twitter. Many million people simply share much more on facebook than they do on all other networks combined.

Ofcourse the theme of the campaign and the product being sold determine the success of the campaign. Afterall no one will really buy campy products sold by shady companies. But adverising on facebook it has been claimed has worked for multinationals with good reputation.

The idea is that the 395 marketers should give us an idea of what the bigger picture. Now, the bigger picture might be different. But, what if it isn’t? What if many marketers around the world feel that way?

But some call the letter a PR stunt. Facebook was only reviewed “negatively” by 395 Marketing executives from “big companies” in US, UK, and Canada. Facebook is only 0.3 points behind on a scale of 5. That’s 6% if you get the maths right.

6% isn’t such a big deal people will say. But then Facebook’s user base is 1.15 billion people. Google Plus has a user base of 500 million if some reports are to be believed. The situation does lend itself to the question. It has been noted that Facebook has been introducing several new types of ads over the last few years, and it is up to marketers to experiment with them and make use of these new tools.

Something might, perhaps, be wrong if people feel that Google plus is better than Facebook. In ny case Facebook should be doing more to attract and retain advertisers.