An Open Letter To Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,
The past several years have seen controversy and some turmoil at Facebook. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with that. From having to testify before Congress, to policing content that prevents election tampering, you’ve got lots of challenges on your plate.
It’s no surprise that you struggle to keep everyone happy. Shareholders come first, government regulators come second, users of the platform are next and then way down at the bottom are the users of the platform who also happen to make up the sales numbers that keep your stock healthy and your investors, your number one, happy. Marketers!
Yes, marketers are the lifeblood of the platform, the engine that keeps the bottom line healthy and investors happy.
I’m sure you are unaware of the chaos marketers are dealing with on a daily basis, I’m sure that you are doing your best to make certain the platform experience for everyone is outstanding, I’m sure of all of these things… And I’m also sure you have failed many of us miserably.
Recently your A.I. and algorithm changes have began systematically shutting down respectable ad accounts, these are advertising accounts of businesses that spend hundreds of thousands, some millions of dollars or more on your platform. These are not selling snake oil, MLM’s, or unicorn solutions that make affiliates wealthy, no, these are legitimate businesses, businesses that support hundreds of employees and like us, have helped thousands of businesses generate billions of dollars in revenue.
Yesterday, our ad account was shut down without rhyme or reason for the second time in as many months.
When we ask for answers, we are given none. There is no one at Facebook who is able to tell us why. This begs the question, if your number one priority is keeping shareholders happy, then where is your accountability to marketers who are continually shut down without reason, justification, or an explanation?
When we ask what policy was violated we receive nothing more than boilerplate text.
Your ad account was disabled for not complying with the following policies:
Facebook Advertising Policies - all ads promoting products and services, as well as Page post content that is boosted, are required to comply with our Policies in order to create a safe environment for people on our platform. Please read through our Policies for more details including examples of do's and don'ts.
What You Can Do
Take our e-learning Blueprint course Ad Policies for Content, Creative, and Targeting to better understand our Advertising Policies as a whole.
Nowhere does it give us the option to get specific information, details of what policy may or may not have been violated, or example something in our work that may or may not have violated policy, nothing. Instead you simply shut down the ad account and move on with business as usual.
Allow me to now share the impact of this irresponsible behavior.
As a Facebook marketing partner, Ad Zombies produces more ads for your platform than any company in the world. On an average day there are between 4,000 and 5,000 ads running on Facebook and have come through our ecosystem for our clients. If any company out there knows how to write TOS compliant ad copy it is us.
While our annual spend with Facebook has its ebbs and flows, we continue to spend tens of thousands of dollars per month, hundreds of thousands of dollars per year and we consistently deliver billions of dollars in generated revenue results for our clients
Now, with our ad account shut down yet again, the impact of your algorithm is impacting my business. I am only speaking for my business because I can’t possibly represent the thousands upon thousands of marketers who have dealt with this exact same issue over the last several weeks and months, but it is frustrating to all of us.
You see, not only does the shutdown of our ad account impact my company’s bottom line, it impacts the bottom line of my team members. Hundreds of people worldwide are impacted by this including employees, contractors, the families they support, the stores they shop in, and lastly the economy that drives our world.
Your algorithm shutting down one account without so much as a human interaction, without so much as an iota of accountability, has a global impact.
Mr. Zuckerberg, I’m glad that I’m not the one who has to explain to shareholders why the company is unstable, why people are abandoning the platform, or why Facebook’s revenue is sliding.
No, I only have to explain to my team why we can’t advertise on Facebook. But I can’t actually explain why.
You may not have caused this problem, but as the owner of the business, you should damn well own both the problem and the solution.