The Future of Advocacy on Facebook
By: Bryan Merica
Tags: Politics

How Digital Public Affairs Campaigns Can Adapt to Facebook’s Future Business Model

Facebook’s current outsized impact on political advocacy is well known; the question is what will the intersection of politics and the technology giant look like in the future. I recently wrote about how underdog candidates are successfully leveraging Facebook to connect with voters.

And we know that presidential candidates, especially Donald Trump’s campaign, committed a significant portion of their digital ad budget on Facebook. This investment crosses party lines; according to Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump spent a combined $81 million on Facebook ads leading up to the November 2016 election.

But this may not be the way of the future. In response to allegations of Russia’s attempt to use social media to interfere in the 2016 presidential election two senators introduced a bipartisan bill “to require online platforms to disclose more information about political advertising on their networks.”

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, California passed a sweeping new law to protect online privacy in June 2018 which shortly followed Europe’s adoption of some of the toughest online privacy rules in the world: the General Data Protection Regulation, also known as the G.D.P.R.

There is also the recent push by privacy groups to have the Federal Trade Commission “punish Facebook and for Congress to enact tougher privacy laws after the social network reportedly shared users’ personal data with more than 150 companies.” This came after the New York Times recently reported that:

“Facebook gave information like users’ friends and private messages to companies including Microsoft, Netflix, and Spotify….raising questions about whether Facebook misled consumers about the kind of information it shares with third parties.”

As Facebook’s influence — and associated controversies — continue to grow it is likely that the tech giant will rethink and revamp its revenue model. As a public affairs professional working with digital media I am highly interested in how Facebook will continue to evolve and how it will impact political advertising. With more privacy laws put in place and calls for greater regulation I anticipate that Facebook will seriously explore ending political advertising on its platform. This may not happen immediately, but political communication as we know it is bound to change.

A powerful framework to map out any company’s future strategies comes from McKinsey: Three Horizons of Growth.

Applying this framework I see several likely changes ahead, all of which will have a profound impact not only Facebook’s business model but the way candidates and issue campaigns use digital media to communicate with their target audience.

Horizon One

The company is focused on maintaining and defending its current business model which is primarily advertising-based. One scenario could be that in an effort to defend its non-political ads, Facebook tightens or eliminates political and advocacy ads entirely. According to an article in Ad Age the amount of political ad spending on Facebook from May to October 2018 was $256 million on 1.7 million ads. This would not be a huge revenue loss as “Facebook generates more than $50 billion in ad revenue a year, so the amount attributed to political ads is relatively small,” but the upside could be huge if there is less scrutiny and less regulation.

What this means: political campaigns would need to find alternative platforms for highly targeted delivery of content to specific audiences. Mediums like addressable TV and precise mobile/geo-targeting of users provide promising frontiers for 1:1 targeting. In particular, the next generation TV standard, ATSC 3.0, will allow personalized targeting of ads and other content at the set top box level. Issue and candidate campaigns will also have to dive into the messy ecosystem of 3rd party platforms offering all manner of custom targeting options.

Horizon Two

This will include evolutions to the current business model such as Facebook’s purchase of Oculus, increasing the company’s focus on delivering experiences through virtual reality (VR). As Facebook increases its investment in VR we could very well see paid promotion opportunities for campaigns inside the VR platform.

What that means: in my Medium post from earlier this year, Ready Citizen One, I explore ways in which VR can be used to enhance advocacy campaigns, including building virtual experiences that increase understanding and empathy for a candidate or a cause. Additionally, if sophisticated VR worlds develop, there may be need for advocacy campaigning to impact policymaking *inside* ad hoc communities developed in Virtual Worlds. These efforts often require major investment to develop and bring to a mass market so it will likely be some time before this is commonplace. However, it’s possible that if Facebook’s abandons political advertising all together opportunities for issues and campaigns to impact policymaking via VR may not come to fruition.

Horizon Three

Contains opportunities that are largely in the research and development stage. A review of Facebook’s research shows that the company has several areas of focus in addition to the more mature VR including artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency. An article in Bloomberg reports that “Facebook Inc. is working on making a cryptocurrency that will let users transfer money on its WhatsApp messaging app.” The company has been working to expand into the financial services sector and now has about 40 people working on blockchain initiatives headed by former PayPal president David Marcus.

What this means: similar to scenario one, Facebook may move away from the user-data fed advertising model altogether, similar to Google’s transition into physical products (e.g. Google’s Pixel phone) and paid services (e.g. premium email, data storage, etc.). Google X, which includes projects far outside its original business such as robots, wireless internet via high altitude balloons and self-driving cars, may serve as a model for Facebook in Horizon Three. In this case, advocacy professionals will need to develop alternative means to match the precise targeting provided by Facebook today.

Conclusion

Facebook has been an effective medium to reach and mobilize the masses, but privacy laws, new regulations and a focus on alternative revenue sources are very likely to dramatically change the status quo over the next few years. The ability to micro-target ads and the application of a known and trusted model will undoubtedly change. Unlike more stable traditional media, digital campaigns must continue to be nimble, innovative and bold. What worked yesterday won’t work tomorrow.’