Video Transcript:
Jason Drohn:
Hey, what's up, this is Jason Drohn. Welcome to today's presentation. Today in Sales System Experts, Episode 12, we're going to talk about Facebook ad boycotts today.
I'm joined with Aaron with his mug. Yeah, man. See, look at that. Is it tough remembering that? I mean, having to wash it every Thursday night and remember...
Aaron Parkinson:
I literally had a cup of coffee in here earlier and I was like, "I got to switch it here to Hammer Smash."
Jason Drohn:
Oh, Hammer Smash. Very nice. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Puny God.
Jason Drohn:
That's funny. And we also wanted to give a link to share... There we go. I can view it on Facebook. So I'm going to grab this link, Aaron, and I'm going to... So I'm going to share this thing with you on Slack, and then you can share it with your folks and it's already shared with all mine.
And while you do that, I will just take over the screen and talk some nonsense for a little bit. Okay?
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I'm just making sure that I've got it happening.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Awesome. So today we're going to talk about Facebook ad boycotts. There's this thing that is going on in the media right now where these big, big, super large companies, advertisers are pulling out of Facebook and saying, "We're just not going to advertise on Facebook.
Aaron Parkinson:
We're boycotting. We don't like free speech.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's so funny because you've got like half the world's like, "I want free speech."
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. And then you got the other half of the world that's like, "I don't want free speech."
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah.
Jason Drohn:
And then they're doing what they should do. They're voting with their wallets.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, totally.
Jason Drohn:
"I don't like your platform."
Aaron Parkinson:
Yep.
Jason Drohn:
"I'm going to vote with my wallet."
Aaron Parkinson:
Yep. And I've had a lot of people this week say, "Is this going to impact Facebook negatively? Are they in trouble?"
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
From this recent boycotting.
Name some of the companies that have publicly boycotted the Facebook ad platform.
Jason Drohn:
Oh geez.
Aaron Parkinson:
I'm pretty sure Coca-Cola did.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. I know Coke did; 3M maybe? Let's just go look... Boycott Facebook... There there's like 12 or 13 really large ones that I saw last and there're a bunch of people who are just jumping in.
Aaron Parkinson:
They're virtue signaling. "Look at me, too."
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. So over 400 advertisers hit pause on Facebook threatening a $70 billion juggernaut. So actually I'm just going to share this and we can talk about this.
Aaron Parkinson:
Sure.
Jason Drohn:
So here we go. So I'm going to share, okay. Here we go. There we go.
Aaron Parkinson:
Thanks.
Jason Drohn:
Yep. 400 advertisers hit pause, threatening a $70 billion juggernaut. So let's see, we've got:
-Proctor & Gamble
-HBO
-Biden for President
-Sprint
-Microsoft
-Purple Innovation
-Home Depot
-AT&T
So this is an interesting thing. Estimated spending of top Instagram advertisers. So we have $30.5 million for Proctor & Gamble. Amazon is $12.2. HBO is $6.8.
Aaron Parkinson:
I spend more money than Procter & Gamble and I'm doing a show with you.
Jason Drohn:
Well, that's the thing. So like the articles... So what I was reading this morning is, so you have these mega-corporations that are pulling advertising, which is, I mean, it's kind of scary and there's a lot of headlines around it. And there's a lot of people who are dumping the stock because of it.
But in all reality, it actually doesn't fucking matter one bit because there are 8 million advertisers on Facebook. So the top 100 advertisers on Facebook, which these guys clearly are, they only make up like 6% of the total ad spend that Facebook realizes... The total income that Facebook realizes.
So if anything, what it does is it opens up more inventory for people like us to get more conversions, to spend more money and we'll just end up sucking that up and then it'll be right back to normal. Yeah. Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
And what a lot of people don't understand is that Facebook is an auction.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? I come in and I say, "I want to spend X amount of dollars for this viewer, this clicker." Right? And Jason, you'll probably be able to give some insight on this, too.
At the end of every quarter, all my costs go up because all the morons that work for these companies that don't know anything about direct response marketing have to spend the rest of their marketing budget before the quarter ends or else they don't get allocated a new marketing budget.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
So at the end of each quarter, you see all the costs go up and they're just dumping nonsense into the platform.
Jason Drohn:
Well, we literally just saw that three days ago.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yep.
Jason Drohn:
I mean, the quarter was up and everything went swoosh for like a week.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. And then all of a sudden, now it's back and it's normal, right? So you have these morons dumping all of this money in.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Screwing over everybody else who's actually got some technical skill.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
And so now they're going to boycott it because they want to make their stance and hey, to each his own. Make your political stance. I'm not judging anybody.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
But the funny thing is that the buyers didn't boycott it.
Jason Drohn:
No.
Aaron Parkinson:
Like if 100 million people in the United States said, "I'm going to delete Facebook from my phone," that would be a problem. Right? For advertisers saying, "I'm not going to advertise on your platform," the consumers didn't go anywhere.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
All that means is that there's more space at a cheaper rate. I mean, I think there's something like a hundred... Is there something like a million advertisers getting started a month on Facebook or something?
Jason Drohn:
Something like that, yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Some absurd numbers. Right? So they will literally feel nothing.
Jason Drohn:
No. Zuckerberg did a... There was a press release or he may have made just a comment, but he said, "They'll all be back." And they absolutely will. Every single one of them will be back. They can't afford to be gone.
Aaron Parkinson:
Absolutely. Because here... We specialize in Facebook, Instagram, the Google products which include YouTube, and a couple of other things. And the biggest buyer demographic is on Facebook and Instagram.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
So I give these guys two months before they come back and then they're not even going to announce it. It's not like they are going to say, "Oh, we changed our mind," or "Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
They will just silently come back in with their stupid wasted budget and screw everybody over again whose actually in there trying to make a living versus riding the golden parachute of some Fortune 500 brand.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, some video.
Aaron Parkinson:
My response to this is good riddance. Don't come back. Please, go away. And when you do come back, call me and I'll actually get you a return on your money. How about that.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Hopefully, somebody high powered up and the thing is like, "What do you mean they're wasting our money."
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
They're all wasting your money. The people that work for you. They don't even know [inaudible 00:08:17] returns on your advertising budget.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
So for those that might have been concerned that somehow this is going to affect their business or not; it's going to impact your business positively, if anything, for a short amount of time before the inventory gets sucked up. Most people don't realize that where the prime time real estate is on Facebook is on the newsfeed.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, that's right.
Aaron Parkinson:
And then you've got the supplementary stuff... In-stream videos-
Jason Drohn:
Which all suck in varying degrees compared to the newsfeed.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right column stuff, messenger; put ads in Messenger.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Like Facebook's out there right now trying to create shows like Netflix because they need more inventory. They need more places to put their ads. And I don't know if you noticed this with YouTube last week, but now when I go to watch a YouTube video, it says, "Do you want to watch three videos upfront or do you want to watch videos throughout?" Like commercials. Right?
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
So even YouTube is starting to like amp up their placements because they need more inventory.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
All the advertisers that are coming in. I mean, let's be honest. Who's placing magazine ads right now?
Jason Drohn:
Nobody.
Aaron Parkinson:
Nobody. Like maybe like a credibility piece in Forbes. I got offered a credibility piece in Forbes. Crazy thing. I got offered one and I won't talk about who, but I got an offer to be in their tech disruption issue, which was like maybe two months ago.
Jason Drohn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Aaron Parkinson:
It's like a two-page spread and it's typically like a quarter-million dollars. A buddy of mine asked me if I wanted to come in because they had extra inventory on the down-low for 20K.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
And I was like, hmm; maybe. It's not going to do anything for me.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
It's literally just to be able to say, "As seen in Forbes," on my site which has obviously some credibility benefits when people read it; but when Forbes can't sell their inventory? Newspapers, magazines, television, it's getting harder and harder and harder.
It's almost like the post-COVID new norm is I've got a half a dozen friends here who had huge offices with 30, 40 staff in them. And I've heard four of them so far say they're not going back to the office.
Jason Drohn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
I mean, these $15K to $25K a month office rentals, they just realized, "We don't need it."
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, totally.
Aaron Parkinson:
So it's an expense that is being cut.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
From an advertising perspective, things that don't measurably produce a result are being cut. You know, those big brands that have sort of crested the hill of where they're just in the brand game now; they just want to put their logo on everything possibly...
They've got these big billion-dollar budgets to just waste and throw without having to measure it. They just want to see how many eyeballs see it. But anything below that; any businesses below that, they're getting hypersensitive to "Am I getting a dollar out for every dollar I'm putting in? No? Cut it."
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? The days of like just spread it all over the place like a fire hose... That shit's over.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
And for now, Facebook and Instagram are the buyer pool. They're your 35 to 55, primarily female shopping pool. And they won't be forever. You know?
We see sometimes when they do some things that maybe could make us go...hmm, like from an advertiser perspective, that's not very friendly.
Jason Drohn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Aaron Parkinson:
That's because they're the king of the hill right now. And like everything, they will run their course and the next one will be Snapchat or TikTok or some...
Jason Drohn:
There's going to be... I mean, not Netflix. Maybe Netflix if they ever go to a commercial model, but Netflix, Hulu, all of that Roku kind of app supported... I think Roku has an incredible platform to be able to do it; but when they can make ad insertion as easy as a Facebook, like a direct DTM or whatever.
But when people like us can go and actually just drop a 30-second video ad, and then it shows to Roku channels, then I think the tide changes a little bit so that we would actually be able to do commercials and maybe radio ads.
But until that time happens, then it's not going to work. You know, the ad spend will continue to move to channels that we can directly control.
Aaron Parkinson:
That we can measure.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, measure. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
The results of our financial input and output. And you know, it's funny because you actually see as the core belief systems.
Jason Drohn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Aaron Parkinson:
These different networks change over time on how competitive they are because if you remember 10 years ago, Google was like the most extreme compliance... Couldn't get anything approved.
Jason Drohn:
"We do no evil" was their mission statement.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right. We went from doing... In one of my businesses, we went from doing 1.2 million hits a week down to 60,000 with one of their algorithm changes where they were like, "Yeah, we're not going to be in this industry anymore," or this or blah, blah, blah.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Literally... You could get nothing approved on their platform.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Now when clients come to me and they're selling coaching or they're selling something that is potentially not one of Facebook's favorite demographics or whatever; we work with them to make sure that they can compliantly do it within the algorithm. But we also add in YouTube now sometimes first.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Because dude, the stuff that YouTube is letting run right now is absurd.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Like I've been hit with some ads lately where I'm like, "What? How is this ad getting approved?"
They basically pulled their compliance way back compared to where they were and that's because they were losing market share.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
So they're like, "Okay, well we've got to adjust to the landscape." And somebody will come and start to threaten Facebook and then Facebook will do exactly the same thing and because there's always going to be some technological... And maybe it'll be AI or something like that.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Something, where we've got the VR systems and that, gets super easy to buy off of or whatever.
Jason Drohn:
The worlds that Facebook is creating inside VR. Did you see that? They're putting together like a programmatic world inside of... That was the whole playbook behind Oculus Rift.
Aaron Parkinson:
Okay.
Jason Drohn:
So they're putting together like a Second Life. Wasn't it Second Life? Second Life was popular like 10 or 15 years ago, wasn't it?
Aaron Parkinson:
I don't know. It's not my forte.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, it's like a virtual world. There're marketplaces and stuff inside this virtual world and stuff. From what I understand, Facebook is building something similar, but you know...
Aaron Parkinson:
They'll need to, to stay relevant, right? As we move away from the phone to the VR to whatever.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
But yeah, I just laughed when I saw that article the other day and I thought we should chat about it.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
I'm sure Facebook looked at it and went, "The PR, not awesome."
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Who are these guys kidding?
Jason Drohn:
But realistically, when have they had great PR in the last year? I mean, congressional hearings, privacy. I guess they do do some... I mean, they have seen some good stuff too, but there's been a lot of negative.
Aaron Parkinson:
I still look back on that congressional hearing and just think, I don't think it gave Facebook bad PR to intelligent people.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
It gave our Congress bad PR to intelligent people. When you've got Congresspeople going, "Well, how do you make money if it's free?"
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
I'm sitting there going, "You're in Congress?"
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Like you can't be this dumb.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? Like your television is free or close enough or whatever. How do you think you get multimillion dollar production all day long on your television for 20 bucks, right? If it's free, you're the product.
Jason Drohn:
Right? Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
If you pay for it, it's a product. If it's free, you're the product. Your eyeballs are being sold to advertisers.
Jason Drohn:
Yep.
Aaron Parkinson:
And the fact that they couldn't wrap their head around the fact that I made a program in the terms and conditions it says, we will show you ads and we will share your data to advertisers. And that's the trade-off for being on our very cool free system... And people can't wrap their minds around it.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? I laugh when I see people post on their Facebook... I saw a comment the other day and it was like, "Dear Facebook: This is notice that you do not have the right to share my information."
And I'm like, "How do these morons exist on this planet." Do you think that all of a sudden they're going to be like, "Okay."
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
You signed the terms and conditions. If you don't want them to have your data, delete the app. Don't use it. Right? I mean, you want to talk about crazy, you talk about TikTok.
Jason Drohn:
Is it bad? I haven't even...
Aaron Parkinson:
Wow.
Jason Drohn:
Wow because of crazy content or wow because of...
Aaron Parkinson:
The fact that Congress is on Facebook all the time, but they're not looking at TikTok... It's baffling.
Jason Drohn:
Really?
Aaron Parkinson:
Because TikTok's developed and owned in China.
Jason Drohn:
True. Very true.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? And TikTok API integrations make Facebook look like Disneyland.
Jason Drohn:
Really?
Aaron Parkinson:
They are tracking every possible piece of data... You can't even wrap your mind around what data they're tracking. And they're funneling it all back to China and as we know, there are no real entrepreneurs in China; they are just people allowed to do business by the government and the government will say, "I want your stuff."
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
As is clearly referenced by one of my clients who were making a product and selling it like crazy and then the factory was told, "You must make masks now." He's like, "Can't you say, no?
No. It's the Chinese government. The Chinese government is taking all of the data out of TikTok and doing whatever governments do with data; spying and creating info models and doing all... And nobody's talking about it right now.
I'm like, "You're worried about Facebook?" At least with Facebook, you can arrest them.
Jason Drohn:
Right. Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Or stop them or do whatever. TikTok is like a fricking Trojan horse that's out of control, controlled by an external government. TikTok's insane. Right? And everybody's, and the users are like this... Swoosh. Straight up. China's like this... We got it all. We got it all. We got all the information we ever need about the younger demographic of the United States.
Jason Drohn:
Wow. That's crazy.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I mean, think about it... If you want to get all conspiracy hot theory, think about if China wanted to start a war on the United States. They know where the younger generation lives, where they are at all times, what they listen to, what they watch, or they go...
Like the other day, I was looking at a breakdown of it and this guy download TikTok and the API showed the apps he had deleted before he downloaded TikTok.
Jason Drohn:
Wow.
Aaron Parkinson:
Like they've got some type of weird APIs into the trash bin of your phone. Right? Theirs is so robust, it makes Facebook look like a joke.
Jason Drohn:
Huh.
Aaron Parkinson:
If you're concerned about those kind of things, which to be honest with you, I'm not, because I live in the normal world, not the tinfoil hat world.
Jason Drohn:
You also have a bubble around your island.
Aaron Parkinson:
That's true. But if you're worried about those kinds of things... Oh, and by the way, there's no way to shut it off. You know why? Because they can't be caught.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Who's going to enforce it?
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Right? So if you're worried about it, forget worrying about Facebook, you need to fucking worry about TikTok.
Jason Drohn:
Wow. That's crazy.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, man. Let's get mad about shit that doesn't matter.
Jason Drohn:
What's funny is I'm sure you've been getting requests, I know I have been, like, "Do you do TikTok?"
"Oh my God, no. Don't do TikTok."
Aaron Parkinson:
I don't to TikTok and I don't do Snapchat. You know why? Because there's no buyers there.
Jason Drohn:
Right.
Aaron Parkinson:
Is a great brand play.
Jason Drohn:
Oh, yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Like if you are one of those companies that just has a brand budget.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah.
Aaron Parkinson:
Sure. But there's no direct response play on those yet that's monetizing anything. Yeah.
Jason Drohn:
Well, it's nuts. Man. That's good stuff.
Aaron Parkinson:
That was fun. That was a fun episode.
Jason Drohn:
That was a fun episode. So next week, we'll have to find some other soapbox to jump on.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah, absolutely. This will be an interesting Rev transcription of this.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, right.
Aaron Parkinson:
On the blog.
Jason Drohn:
I guarantee you, we're going to start getting ranked for all kinds of crazy shit.
Aaron Parkinson:
Yeah. I don't know which one we're going to focus on. We can either focus on Facebook's advertisers leaving or why TikTok is the worst thing you could possibly have on your phone.
Jason Drohn:
Yeah, it'll be interesting. All right, man. I will talk to you soon.
For those of you who want more information or an action plan... Not that we really talked about anything action plan-ish; but if you'd like us to talk to you about traffic for your brand or your business, go to doneforyou.com/start to fill out the little application, book a time on our calendar and we will talk to you soon. All right? Thanks.
Aaron Parkinson:
See you next Friday.
Jason Drohn:
See you. Bye.