Digiday+ Research deep dive: Agencies and brands lose confidence in Facebook, even though they still spend there

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Agencies and brands alike continue to put marketing spend toward Facebook. But, according to a Digiday+ Research survey of 138 agency and brand professionals, the buy side’s confidence in Facebook as a marketing channel is trending downward — more so for brands than agencies.

Digiday’s survey found that Facebook is the top marketing channel among agencies. Ninety-three percent of agency pros said at least a little of their clients’ marketing budgets goes toward Facebook (which tied with its Meta sibling Instagram). However, Facebook is second to Google when it comes to spending big. Forty-seven percent of agency pros said their clients spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Google, compared with 40% who said so of Facebook.

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The story looks a bit different for brands. Eighty-five percent of brand pros said they spend at least a little of their marketing budgets on Facebook, putting it in third place for brands, after Google and online display ads and tied with Instagram. Facebook came in third place among brands who spend big on the channel as well. More than a quarter of brand respondents (27%) said they spend a large or very large portion of their marketing budgets on Facebook, putting it behind Google and Instagram.

According to Digiday’s survey, the largest percentage of agency clients spend a moderate amount of their marketing budgets on Facebook. Nearly a third of agency pros (31%) said in Q1 of this year that their clients spend a moderate amount on the platform, a number that has remained consistent over the last year.

The percentage of agency pros who said their clients spend a large amount of their marketing budgets on Facebook has also been consistent over the last year. This group was the second-largest in Digiday’s survey, which found that 29% of agency pros said their clients spend a large amount on Facebook.

Interestingly, the percentage of agency pros who said their clients spend a very large portion of their marketing budgets on Facebook has fallen steadily over the last year. In Q1 2022, 18% of respondents to Digiday’s survey said their clients spent a very large portion of their budgets on Facebook, compared with 15% who said so in Q3 2022 and 11% who said so in Q1 of this year.

Meanwhile, the percentage of agency pros who said …read more

Source:: Digiday