Forbes: What Is The Future Of Facebook Advertising?

May 24, 2021 Media

Facebook’s success is legendary, but it’s now facing serious rivals on various fronts.

The social network’s worldwide ad revenue topped $84 billion in 2020. Just 11 years earlier, the company was earning $764 million in ad revenue. The number of users has grown — by 2,700 percent since 2007, totaling 2.7 billion users in 2020 — but Facebook’s savvy approach to beating the competition and making itself invaluable to advertisers is what grew ad revenue by 109,000 percent.

But the company, which also owns Instagram, WhatsApp and Oculus VR, is confronting major competitors. They include Apple and Twitter, as well as start-up competitors, such as Locals.com.

The Federal Trade Commission and a number of state Attorneys General filed suit against Facebook for alleged anti-trust activities, including purchasing competitors. In March, Facebook filed to dismiss the charges, claiming: “People around the world use our products not because they have to, but because we make their lives better.”

Matt Stoller, American Economic Liberties Project research director, a leading Facebook critic, says the company should “be broken up into its component parts — WhatsApp, Instagram, and the original Facebook blue network. That’s what the Federal Trade Commission and state lawsuit is requesting.” He also told Zenger that Zuckerberg should be in jail “because he routinely engages in what looks like criminal fraud in lying to advertisers.”