Facebook's user woes may start to impact ad revenues
$Facebook(FB.US$ The Wall Street Journal has been releasing a number of damning articles on Facebook, known as "The Facebook Files," after investigative journalism and whistle-blowers threw up a host of internal documents and chats that have now put the company under fire. Much of the focus relates to Facebook's negative effects on its users. However, there is one article that carries more weight for Facebook's financials, and it relates to Facebook admitting internally that it has no idea how many actual users it has. In a recent internal presentation, Facebook estimated that between 32%-56% of new accounts were opened by existing users, and 11% of total monthly active users were duplicates.
A separate memo also revealed that:
"...the number of U.S. Facebook users who are in their 20s and active at least once a month often exceeds the total population of Americans their age. “This brings out an elephant in the room: SUMA,” the memo’s author wrote, using an internal abbreviation for “Single User Multiple Accounts.” The author added that the issue could render Facebook’s ratio of users active each day “less trustable.”
To quantify this and illustrate the impact on MAU growth, if one assumes that 40% of new accounts created are duplicate accounts, and time spent on the Facebook platform is unchanged per 'real' user despite having multiple accounts, Facebook's reported Q-o-Q MAU growth over the last two years declines from 2.3% to 1.4%. That is an almost halving of user growth.
Despite the lackluster "real" MAU growth, Facebook's revenues have continued to show a strong pace, a result of strong pricing power as one of the few social media giants. The company's average revenue per person has continued to trend upwards, showing strength since the final quarter of 2020 as economies recover from the COVID-19 scare. Facebook's advertising revenue growth has also kept pace with Google, its closest competitor.
However, the Wall Street Journal's Facebook Files were only released in Sep-Oct 2021. In my view, the Facebook Files revelations may prompt advertisers to think twice before buying ads on Facebook, or precipitate downward negotiations to ad pricing. After all, with 32%-56% of new users and 11% of total users being duplicates, from an ad buyer's point of view, shouldn't these duplicates also be factored into the price of advertisements?
In addition to ad pricing risk, there is the constant threat of new kids on the block like TikTok taking away eyeball time from Facebook's prized Gen Z platform - Instagram. Despite Instagram having 1.3x as many users as TikTok in 2019, eMarketer estimates that in 2021 TikTok will have 1.1x as many users as Instagram. With Gen Z users increasingly splitting their time between multiple social media platforms, MAUs may no longer be a sound metric to judge Facebook's growth potential.
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Laara : Multiple accounts??? How shocking. Flabbergasting!! If only…if if… it hadn’t been that way SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE FREAKING INTERNET! What naive born yesterday princess has only one account for any service?? What rock have you been sleeping under Rip Van Twinkle?
ksdesign : Wait until the bombshell report that Twitter users have multiple accounts too.
yuu smp Laara :
Jennings1003 Laara : You missed the part about "could prompt ad buyers to negotiate prices downwards". True statement.