Facebook Ads Expert Reacts To MASSIVE Meta Update

0:00so a few days ago Mark Zuckerberg made a huge announcement that is going to change Facebook and Instagram significantly and it's likely to have a big impact on meta advertisers now I've spent more than $100 million on meta ads over the past 11 years I've built a specialized Ad Agency in this space and in this video I'm going to share what I expect will happen as a result of this announcement and the changes that are going to take place and the impact that that will have on Facebook ads and Instagram ads okay so let's start by just quickly covering the main points within Mark Zuckerberg's announcement

0:29cuz this is really big deal for for meta for obviously the the apps of Facebook Instagram anyone that uses those platforms for business purposes social media in general this is this is a really big deal so the main gist of what he said is that they are going to as he termed it get back to their roots and uh focus on free expression on the platform and what he's referring to specifically is opening up the content that can be posted on Facebook Instagram Etc and reducing some of the restrictions and changing their content moderation systems so for a number of years meta has had quite strict content moderation

1:04systems in comparison to other platforms like X and he specifically referenced X and that has prevented people from sharing content posting things about all sorts of things and they're going to move away from that and they're going to instead have a much more open system they're going to be getting rid of fact Checkers um and instead having a community notes I think he called it system where people can report stuff that might violate uh content policies um they're doing a whole number of things that basically along those lines trying to allow people to post more of what they want on the platform he also talked about changing how certain

1:38content ranks so previously any political content would be uh down ranked and people would less likely to see it um now they're going to change the algorithm so that that content is uh promoted to people just in the same way that any other pieces of of content would be so it represents quite a big shift in terms of how the content is approached um on the platform and that leaves everyone in our industry thinking okay what what impact is this going to have on the platform and therefore on meta advertisers on people who who are in my audience that run Facebook ads Instagram ads and rely on that to

2:09generate leads clients uh sales and things like that for their business okay so first I think we need to have a quick look at and I think about why a meta actually doing this like what's the motivation behind this move so there's a few potential options could be to please a new Administration coming in in the US that obviously happens very soon and meta might be thinking okay there might be a bit of backlash here there might be some um government intervention to force us to move in this direction to open things up um as as has been done on X since Elon Musk bought it therefore

2:43let's get ahead of this and let's say we're going to do it anyway let's sort of appease an Administration that might not look on us very um favorably so that might be a big part of it he in his announcement he even talks about the fact that the recent election shows as a like a societal desire for for more open media sources and things like that so he sort of gives gives a nod to that um if that is the case I think that's smart and as a meta Advertiser myself someone whose business relies um on on these platforms I would rather that meta worked with the new Administration um

3:17got ahead of it got on their good side as opposed to potentially being hurt by regulations and being forced to do things so if that's part of the motivation I I think that's smart and that's likely to provide a more stable platform going forward for people like me and businesses that that rely on uh on meta ads um as well we don't want a government bringing a hammer down and messing things up right I think also so I think that's part of it I think part of the motivation is also probably a bit of a personality shift from Mark himself um he has a lot of control at meta more

3:49than most people in his position would have even at the large tech companies even found a Le like he has um a share structure where he has voting power to basically decide what the company does um so he can exercise his will and make changes according to what he thinks is best and I've listened to a number of interviews watched a number of interviews with him recently and he does seem to have changed as a person to some extent that is to be expected he started meta when he was a child basically um well Facebook then and and it became meta and when he's a child he's had a

4:25lot of learning changing growing up to do he's been attacked by government and a huge amount of press um over the last couple of decades I don't think it should be very surprising at all that like his personality May well have shifted recently we've seen he's changed in terms of how he presents his uh Persona publicly he's been into Jiu-Jitsu and MMA and he's dressing differently he's wearing really expensive watches and he like he seems to some extent a different person he's the father now kids growing up like people change right from what I seen of what he has said part of this is just a

5:03personality shift in that he thinks this is now more important one of the things that I'm getting from him is that he's potentially more willing to push back and fight against external sources whereas previous years meta came under some criticism um involved in elections or anything like that and and and he would sort of then seek to change seek to address it couldn't keep everyone happy of course not like that's absolutely impossible with um position that he's in but he would try and do that I think maybe he's going to do less of that so he probably knows that with this change they're going to come in for a lot of

5:37criticism from a lot of media sources and I think as a person he's now like Bring it on I don't care it just that's what it seems to be might be wrong but that's what it seems to me we also have to acknowledge and he and Mark makes this very clear in his announcement that part of their motivation for doing this was that the previous content moderation system was not very good at all uh posts were mistaken taken down all the time and not only were they taken down mistakenly all the time perhaps they used a certain word but it's not in the context of it being anything bad and

6:11therefore it got that post taken down uh incorrectly because the algorithm just picked up on it and just went right that that post isn't allowed and then that can have knock on effects their whole Facebook profile or Instagram account could be taken down that could affect their ability to use the platform to do it use it for business purposes um so lots of issues and I know that you know this is slightly different TOS discussed here but on the advertiser side of things in terms of getting ads approved and things like that there are lots of mistakes made and we've all seen whether it's organic posts or ads we've

6:39all seen examples of things that we weren't able to post that were not allowed potentially got our account in trouble and then you go and have a look on the platform and you're like hang on how on Earth has this person been able to post this when I wasn't allowed to post something that was far less extreme wasn't controversial at all it just and so he's talked about the previous content moderation systems not being good enough and that's part of the reason is he'd rather open it up and potentially there be more extreme stuff that does get published but not have as many mistakes in terms of people not

7:11being able to talk about things that no one would really have a problem with um but just were accidentally um being flagged okay so I think given my experience with the platform that's certainly true and it did need a change it's just interesting that they decided to go this way um with it he's also talked about there being biased amongst the fact checkers prev previously and things like that so that's all all very interesting so I want to run through the motivations because I think the waiting between those different motivations will have an impact on the effect so if this is done to appease a new Administration

7:42in the US primarily a new government well this might be a bit of a token gesture we might not see a huge amount of change okay put yourself in meta shoes right you make all the right noises you tweak a few things here and there but otherwise if if that's how you want to carry on how you have been doing for the last however long you want to carry on like that you could probably more or less do that we won't see a huge change if this is more of a personality shift in Mark he's more willing now to be like we're going to do it this way I

8:08think this is what's best and I don't care um what people say then it's likely to be much more significant and I think that third point that I made in terms of the motivation for this change being their previous system wasn't very good that also would indicate that this is likely to be a significant change because you know I and most people in my audience would agree that a lot of their automated um algorithms for detecting ads or content that aren't right or don't work very well and shouldn't be allowed like that stuff's not great okay so I think this is likely to be quite a

8:38significant shift in terms of how content is approached and therefore the look feel of the platform user behavior on the platform I think it might be reasonably significant one of the most significant changes we've seen what does this mean for advertisers specifically which is clearly my audience right and mostly advertisers I think there are big potential pros and cons now I should say we don't know what's going to happen right there could be I could get this wrong there could be things I haven't predicted all sort of stuff but I've got a lot of experience with this platform I'm about as experien as a meta Advertiser can get given what I've spent

9:10how long I've been doing this built a large audience a large agency in the space etc etc right so I think I've got some some good insight to share on what the potential pros and cons are for meta advertisers a big potential Pro is that what happens on the organic content side of things and that's what Mark zuberg was talking about that could easily also be applied to ads now I still expect ad content to be more restricted than organic content and I think it should be I think that makes sense but we have had very restrictive ad content for a number of years far more restrictive than I

9:43would like it to be in many circumstances far more restriced than I think makes sense in many circumstances so opening that up would be amazing and huge particularly for those businesses that constantly get flagged that operate in the health and fitness space or in the any sort of space that tries to help people improve their careers or make money or or anything along those lines like it's really really difficult and this is an example I've talked about before but I want to give it again now right so one of the meta's ad policies one of meta's AD policies when it comes to restrictive content is they say you

10:16can't make unrealistic claims now in their on their example page within the meta ad policies one of their unrealistic claims they literally give this as an example is um you can't claim to be teaching people something that shows them how to make at least $1,000 a month and just like hang on so you're telling me that if in an ad I say learn this thing and make at least $1,000 a month from it that's an unrealistic claim that's mental like that's that's crazy what that doesn't make any sense there are so many things you could teach someone where they could then realistically make more than $1,000 a

10:58month from it any sort of professional qualification I mean so you see what I mean like loads of skills that would help you grow a business loads of skills that would help you get a promotion at your job that would help you make more than $1,000 a month right so that's a good example of where their restrictions on ad content are just way over the top if that was a million a month sure fine that's an unrealistic claim $1,000 a month is most definitely not so if people able to if advertisers able to say stuff like that I think that's I think that would be perfectly reasonable

11:26um and we see that on the unrealistic claim side of things when you are advertising anything and you have examples of fantastic results you want to be able to share those examples of fantastic results and meta often says no you can't say that that's unrealistic and you're like but we actually did it we have that with our own advertising so we share amazing results that we're able to achieve with our Facebook and Instagram ad clients and we might we have examples of like 60x row ass 80x return on ad spend like crazy numbers and often we can't actually advertise those we have to advertise using the 5x

12:006X row examples because met is like that's unrealistic but like you it happened you can see it in the ad account if you really if you want to you can go and check and and verify this so I think if that if that content gets opened up that would be amazing what may also then come with that is that the bar for getting ad accounts disabled might be higher which would also be great because what will often happen is ADS will be disapproved sometimes incorrectly often incorrectly and if you get enough of those you will then have your account disabled so you can end up with a situation this happens all the

12:32time where advertisers haven't really done anything wrong they haven't violated policies or if they have it's like they violated the one I just gave as an example which is perfectly reasonable I imagine you're advertising a training qualification for a professional something that's going to allow you to get a job that earns many times $1,000 a month like it's just silly right um so you you have those ads disapproved your ad account then gets uh taken down if your ads a life lik to be disapproved that of some total of disapprovement that then leads to an ad account ban would be harder to achieve and we should hopefully see more

13:04advertisers not just get wiped out and taken down um for no reason that would be good again this is speculation one thing has to happen for them the other thing to have to happen but I'd like to think this is the way things are going which would be great okay let's talk about some of the potential cons for meta advertisers so if the content on the platform becomes more extreme perhaps more politicized and there's people that obviously don't like that then we may see users leave the platform now that would obviously be not not good for advertisers because if there's less users there's less um ad inventory

13:35there's less times to put ads um or maybe people don't leave but they use the platform less that would also be banned because Less ad inventory less people to potentially sell to like we're advertisers we want as many people on the platform as possible if the advertiser numbers stay the same and there's less users then there's more competition for less people that will naturally drive up the price right higher uh more demand less Supply drives up the price um so that could be a potential issue if we see and I think we have a bit of a case study with this with X because the content was opened up

14:06um when Elon Musk um bought bought the platform and that does seem to have led to a drop in monthly users however assuming that the exact same thing will happen with meta as it happened with X I think is not correct because the platforms are very different and it's much much easier for someone to decide to stop using X forly Twitter than it is to decide to stop using meta remember meta is well let's just say it's Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp there's also threads but like imagine deciding tomorrow that you were never going to use any of those platforms I'm sure there are some people watching this

14:41video that don't use them although they might just use it for business purposes but even as a personal user right okay maybe I could stop using Instagram but like could I stop using Whatsapp well I you know I've got family WhatsApp groups and Friends WhatsApp groups and it's how I organize my six side football team and like I can't like Facebook's how I organize another um social hobby thing that I'm involved with where that's how that's how people talk right that would be really difficult to do for so many people so are we going to see a mass Exodus I think it would be very unlikely

15:12just because of how woven into everyday life those apps are much more than x ever was aside from advertising how many people do business they buy things they communicate with people they reach out to people via WhatsApp via Instagram DMs like very very difficult to do we also know that in the comparison with X a lot of advertisers stopped running ads they sort of boycotted the platform as it were um and ELO must have been very open a number of times about this saying that it's silly and there's lots of Impressions to be had and the ads are really cheap now and all that sort of

15:46stuff will that happen to meta I think that is also much less likely so just like I think it's much harder for users to leave The Meta apps than it is for users to leave X it's also the same for businesses and advertisers because of the things I just mentioned I think all the um Outreach takes place via DMS so many businesses do business on WhatsApp they use WhatsApp as like the chat function within their business to be able to talk to existing customers and process returns and refunds and ask questions and stuff like that um so many businesses run ads on meta and that is

16:19one of the most important ways they acquire their customers the idea of just walking away from that very very difficult to do much easier to do on a platform where that may not have been the case i' I've interacted with thousands and thousands of businesses tons their primary most important acquisition channel is Facebook and Instagram ads very few would say the same about X advertising what you typically see is that most of the budgets going into Google ads most of the budget's going into meta ads and then there's like a little bit available for X ads afterwards because there's far fewer Impressions there's far fewer people on there um and therefore it's

16:53much easier to be like yeah that was only 5% 10% of our budget anyway like okay we'll just um say goodbye to it whereas doing that with meta so difficult and and what would your viable alternative be right you've got Google as a massive online ad platform but it it operates quite differently in a lot of ways to meta um you've got Tik Tok but Tik Tok always seems like it's a few months six months of being banned in the US there's always things coming up would you want your business wholly relying on a platform that could disappear overnight I know some obviously there are lots of businesses advertising on

17:25Tik Tok but to have that as your main core Focus and replace what meta ads is for a lot of businesses very uh very tricky if we do see some advertisers leave though I think the numbers are likely to be small if we do see that that's kind of great for those of us that going to stick on the platform because less competition means lower costs so if that does happen then that's not the end of the world at all um but like I said I do think it's very unlikely um you're talking about people moving away from so much potential business and so much of marketing

17:57resource nowadays is focused towards meta obviously you've got to the advertising side of things you've got a lot of direct communication a lot of cold Outreach happens on mattera when people talk about influencer marketing they are mostly referring to Instagram typically some Facebook obviously there's YouTube in there as well and there are other platforms there's Tik Tok and stuff like that but if I said like an influencer marketing campaign the first platform most people are going to think about is Instagram so you're walking away from all that as well so we go I also think this is worth noting that this is one of the advantages that comes with someone

18:32like Mark having so much control is that let's say metha does this well they are going to do this the process of doing it in the US first and it's not good like the content's way too extreme people are leaving in large numbers meta has the ability to course correct and like I absolutely think they would backtrack or tweak things or change them if they saw that these changes had a big negative impact like I can't imagine they're just going to implement this and if it does go back I'd happily see a billion meta users leave and just be like ah whatever like that that is not going to happen

19:05they will course correct so if this does go bad and I I don't think it necessarily will in terms of user uh user base like I think there's a good chance that it makes very little difference for the reasons I've discussed um in terms of who's on there how long they're on there all those sorts of things it might change how the platform looks and feels a little bit but but from those things I there likely to be a relative small difference but let's say I'm wrong and there is is a big difference in the number of users I'm pretty sure they're going to course correct and change that before it has a

19:33chance to do anything really damaging longterm to the platform like I said the bar to convincing someone to leave meta alog together is high very high particularly like I said with people Comm how many how many people like how many of you watching this will use WhatsApp Facebook Instagram threads to communicate with people outside of any business person Pur just in your personal life on a regular basis it's going to be I imagine the vast majority so there are obviously a lot of unknowns at this point and it is hard to say definitively we will see what happens I will certainly be paying very close attention to this and I'll be keeping

20:12you updated on the impact that this does have so make sure you subscribe um for future videos on this but I do think that overall from an Advertiser standpoint I actually think this is more positive than it is negative I think it's more likely to benefit advertisers than it is to uh hurt them because I don't think impact on the user base which is what we really care about is going to be very negative but I do think the opening up of content and then what's likely to come is an opening up of AD content could be really really beneficial and give us a lot more um

20:42flexibility now of course this has been met with a huge amount of negativity it it was always going to Mark could have said the complete opposite he could have said we're going to really tighten things up and and that would also have been met by a lot of negativity probably from different people but that would have been what people talked about so that was always going to happen that doesn't um overly concern me but um but yeah we will see things always change very fast in the space that creates fantastic opportunities which is great it also presents some difficulties and we need to adapt and and be able to

21:11change with it and find best practices under new setups and new paradigms and those that do that get the best possible results and if you want to help navigating that as this changes as the platform changes and as there will continue to be lots of changes um then you might want to consider my mentorship program so with my mentorship program me and my team Mentor you daily uh we help you get the very best Facebook and Instagram advertising results we do live calls all the time multiple live calls uh per week with me and my team we're in your ad account we're auditing we're giving you very specific feedback you

21:42can ask us questions anytime that you want uh it really is geared to to be sort of have one of my $400 million Facebook ad team members in your business along with me to help uh provide advice and consult and things like that there is a link in the description you can click on that come through to Pat our website and one last stat on my mentorship program that I want to leave you with is that 82% of people that join my mentorship program see a notable Improvement in their return on ad spend from their Facebook and Instagram ads within just 30 days of joining so something I'm really proud of

22:14it shows the menhip program is doing what we wanted it to do and really really helping advertisers take their business to the next level so if you want to if you're interested go ahead and click on that and um go ahead and book a call and hopefully we get a chance to work together thanks for watching the video I'll see you in another one