NOT!
Facebook and YouTube are like MVPDs in that they are not creators of content but distributors of it. The only difference is that instead of charging a fee, they embed a tracking beacon in your brain. Well, not exactly.. but they do harvest your behaviors and activities. To them, you’re a bug. And they’ve hypnotized marketers into forking over big bucks by selling them the notion that they can leverage that data for high impact narrowly targeted messages. Why then, is Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google collectively the 3rd largest Television advertiser ($1.9 billion) behind P+G and General Motors? Why can’t they use all the God knows how much information they have about us to say, restore public confidence, promote new content or sell Echo’s and Alexa’s? Because, my dear digital dipsomaniac, they can’t. For one, TV gives them access to humans and very few bots. It affords them brand safety, viewability and third party verification. “In any given minute, 76 percent of adults are engaged with TV versus 7 percent for Facebook” (for all of you mathletes – that’s 10x less than TV). TV is an important part of our culture and communities. It creates a shared reality and is practically the only thing that connects the increasingly lonely and disconnected society they’ve helped to create. They are watching, listening, triangulating, monitoring and know better than anyone but will never admit it, which TV ads bring what people to what websites and just how much their Search, Display and short form Video ROI would be hampered without TV’s help.
“When it’s your money, FAANG has all the answers. When it’s their money, they buy TV.” – Sean Cunningham, President Video Advertising Bureau
