Facebook is halfway through a far-reaching advertiser boycott designed to last until the end of July, a standoff that could extend if the company doesn’t meet the organizers’ demands to clean up the spread of hate speech and misinformation on its platforms.

It puts big-name brands participating in the boycott in a precarious position; there’s no easy answer for when they should return their ad dollars to those channels.

Before they do, brands have to consider the demands of advocacy groups and regular consumers, as well as the risk of giving up the very targeting tools that are best used to reach them. And, of course, what Facebook ultimately changes to make the platform safer.

The campaign’s organizers, including the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP, were soundly unconvinced that Facebook had done anything to clean up its act amid the boycott after meeting with executives in a video conference last week.

Jed Meyer, managing director, North America, Ebiquity said that Facebook will be hard-pressed to get brands to return until it outlines an actual roadmap for change. Adding:

If there’s not something like that, I think it’s probably harder to want to go back until there’s something tangible that you can point to and say, ‘OK, they got it’.

Read the full article in AdWeek, here.

First featured 15/07/2020.