I’ve been using Facebook for quite a few years now, and while it’s never exactly been free from advertising, I’ve noticed something rather strange happening to my news feed recently. What was once primarily a collection of updates from friends, family and pages I’d chosen to follow now seems to consist largely of advertisements, suggested posts and recommendations to join Facebook groups I’ve never even heard of.
In fact, sometimes I can scroll through several posts without seeing anything from somebody I’m actually friends with.
Now, I’m well aware that Facebook is a business, and that advertising is how Meta makes most of its money. Having worked in digital marketing for the best part of two decades, I’m hardly going to complain about the existence of online advertising. However, there does seem to have been a noticeable shift in the balance between the content people actually want to see and the content Facebook would prefer them to look at.
So what’s going on?
Facebook Is Showing More Advertisements
Firstly, it’s not necessarily your imagination that you’re seeing more advertisements. According to Meta’s financial results, the number of advertising impressions delivered across its family of applications increased by 28% during 2023, compared with the previous year.
That doesn’t mean every individual Facebook user saw 28% more advertisements, as the figures include Instagram and Meta’s other advertising properties, but it certainly suggests that the company has been finding more opportunities to display ads.
Interestingly, while the number of advertising impressions increased, the average price advertisers paid actually fell by 9% over the same period.
From a commercial perspective, this makes perfect sense. If Meta can display more advertisements without significantly reducing the amount of time people spend using its platforms, it can generate additional revenue even if advertisers are paying slightly less for each impression.
However, there’s presumably a limit to how far this can go before people start finding the experience sufficiently irritating that they stop using Facebook altogether.
What’s with All the Suggested Groups?
The other change I’ve noticed is the sheer number of suggested posts and groups appearing in my feed.
These aren’t necessarily advertisements in the traditional sense. Instead, Facebook’s algorithms are recommending content from people, pages and groups that you don’t currently follow, based on what it thinks you might find interesting.
Meta has been moving in this direction for some time. In 2023, the company revealed that more than 20% of the content appearing in Facebook and Instagram feeds was being recommended by artificial intelligence from accounts or groups that users hadn’t chosen to follow.
The idea is that Facebook can introduce you to interesting content you might otherwise never discover, encouraging you to spend more time using the platform.
In principle, there’s nothing particularly wrong with that. I’ve occasionally come across interesting groups or pages that I probably wouldn’t have found otherwise.
However, the recommendations can also be spectacularly irrelevant.
I’ve seen suggestions for groups discussing subjects I’ve shown absolutely no interest in, posts from people I’ve never heard of and seemingly endless collections of recycled memes that have little connection to anything I actually use Facebook for.
There’s also an important distinction between a sponsored post and a suggested one. Sponsored content is advertising that somebody has paid Meta to display, whereas suggested content is generally selected by Facebook’s recommendation algorithms. Some advertisers can also pay to promote Facebook groups, but not every group recommendation is a paid advertisement.
The problem is that, from the user’s perspective, both types of content can feel like unwanted interruptions.
Why Is Facebook Doing This?
I suspect there are two main reasons behind these changes.
The first is obviously financial. Meta generated almost $135 billion in revenue during 2023, with the overwhelming majority coming from advertising. Keeping users engaged and finding additional places to display advertisements are therefore enormously important to the business.
The second reason is competition, particularly from TikTok.
Unlike Facebook’s original approach of primarily showing content from people you’ve chosen to connect with, TikTok’s recommendation system is designed to show you videos it thinks you’ll enjoy, regardless of whether you follow the creator.
This has proved incredibly successful, and Meta has clearly been trying to incorporate some of the same principles into Facebook and Instagram.
Rather than simply being a social network connecting friends and family, Facebook increasingly appears to be positioning itself as a platform for discovering content from across the internet.
The question is whether that’s actually what its users want.
What Does This Mean for Businesses?
From a digital marketing perspective, there are some interesting implications.
For businesses that rely on Facebook to communicate with their customers, the increasing emphasis on recommended content could potentially provide opportunities to reach people who have never previously encountered their brand.
However, it also means competing against an enormous amount of other content for attention.
Simply building up thousands of followers on your Facebook page doesn’t guarantee that those people will actually see what you publish. Facebook has been restricting the organic reach of business pages for years, and the increasing emphasis on algorithmically recommended content only makes the situation more complicated.
Paid advertising remains an effective way of reaching specific audiences, but businesses need to be careful about assuming that more advertising impressions automatically translate into better results.
If users are becoming increasingly frustrated by the amount of promotional content appearing in their feeds, there’s a possibility they’ll simply become better at ignoring it.
Can You Do Anything About It?
Fortunately, there are a few things you can do if you’re finding the changes irritating.
Facebook has a Feeds section that allows you to view more recent posts from friends, pages and groups you follow, without the same emphasis on suggested content found in the main Home feed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t eliminate advertising altogether.
You can also hide individual suggested posts, indicate that you’re not interested in particular content and adjust your advertising preferences.
However, none of these options really restores Facebook to the relatively straightforward social network it used to be.
Personally, I think Facebook needs to be careful about how aggressively it pursues additional advertising revenue and engagement. There’s clearly a commercial incentive to keep people scrolling for as long as possible, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of the very thing that made the platform popular in the first place.
After all, if I wanted to spend my time looking at posts from complete strangers, I’d probably be using something other than Facebook.