Facebook encountered three new challenges last week: a Washington Post article detailing a GOP-led, Meta-funded smear campaign against TikTok; a Verge report exposing significant increases in the visibility of harmful content over a six-month period; and a study from North Carolina State University that found that the platform’s ‘Interest Categories’ targeting tool may be ‘up to 33% inaccurate,’ per Search Engine Land.

If this sudden landslide of mini-scandals has you reconsidering your social media advertising spend, don’t act too quickly. Search Engine Journal recently published a list of social media facts that bolster the case for advertising across platforms. Here are a few highlights.

• The vast majority of consumers use social media. In the United States, 72 per cent of all adults were on at least one social network.
• Those users spend hours online every day. According to Statista Research Department, the average global social media user spent 147 minutes per day – that’s two hours and 27 minutes – on their favourite social sites.
• Despite challenges, Buffer reported that in 2019 73 per cent of marketers considered their social media advertising efforts to be “somewhat” or “very effective.”
• Looking at Instagram, the platform reported that, as of 2018, 50 per cent of users were “more interested in a brand when they see ads for it on Instagram.”
• YouTube is a massive opportunity for brands just starting to produce video content; it has two billion monthly active logged-in users around the world, meaning there’s almost certainly somebody on the platform looking for the content you’re producing.
• If you’re targeting younger consumers, 68 per cent of TikTok’s users are under 30, and in the United States those users spend more than an hour per day on the platform.
• And Facebook continues to be a great way to reach customers: almost half of its billions of users log in multiple times per day, and those users spend more than 30 minutes per day scrolling their feeds.

Despite its prominence, social media remains a relatively new way of connecting with each other and with consumers. There will continue to be moral and business challenges for all social platforms, but the advertising advantages almost certainly outweigh those risks. To discuss your social media advertising strategy, contact GrowthEngine Media today.

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