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Comment by ankit219 | Hacker News Reader

Facebook has a long tail of 8 million advertisers (according to their earnings report).Some of the big ones leaving would mean that the relatively smaller ones would get better returns on spend (due to fewer bidders and lower top bid) and in turn spend more.

This does help the brands get a bit of free PR at Facebook's expense, given that many of them would have been planning to reduce the spend anyway due to Covid.

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Yep. This is just a few big companies finding a clever way to get free marketing out of a decision to cut their marketing budgets due to the pandemic.

By that same token, how big are the companies at the end of the tail? If large corporations are cutting marketing budgets, small shops on tighter budgets probably are as well

If you have a positive ROI on marketing, and prices go down, you increase spend.

Big brands cutting spend on positive ROI is probably foolish, especially if it lets your competitors increase their ROI. For brands like pepsi that don't sell online, then it's just a cost center.

Its the volume that makes up for that. Top 100 adverstisers on Facebook make up less than 20% of the total advertising revenue. So, a lot of other subscribers make up a major chunk, and if they increase spend even slightly (given better ROI) Facebook will have a net gain.

Not every other guy would have a tighter budget. Companies like a gaming company, a streaming platform, home delivery, edtech, telemedicine, D2C brands to name a few are the ones which have increased their budget during these times. Adding that to the fact they get better ROI on Facebook ads mean they will end up spending more (and getting more value in return).

Smaller advertisers risk being viewed as less relatable and ignorant of the damage to Facebook's brand.

No, they really don't because no-one can hold a list of millions of advertisers and who boycotted and who didn't in there head. There is no way most people will check a list before making a purchase either if that was going to be the next suggestion.

That wasn't the suggestion. The suggestion was, as I scroll through my feed, I see an ad and am displeased that small niche brand, whom as a small company, is more socially aware than a large corporation, and the small company is supposed to understand the issues with hate speech, yet they haven't left FB. It was not 'every consumer knows the millions of brands who left off the top of their head'.

If you're scrolling through your feed you haven't left Facebook either.

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