With a proliferation of media choices, it’s increasingly confusing for brands to understand which outlets make the most sense for their business. There is a certain amount of faith that the social media outlets (in a quest to also increase their own bottom lines) are working as hard as they can to guarantee your success.
Forrester added its point of view yesterday with its announcement that heavyweight Facebook was not pulling its weight.
In a new report by Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Nate Elliott (aptly titled “An Open Letter to Mark Zuckerberg”) Forrester made a claim that Facebook is failing marketers. But how true is that? Consider the facts:
- Forrester only surveyed 395 marketing executives. As of July 2013, Facebook had over 1,000,000 advertisers using their platform. This means that Forrester’s sample size only represented 0.000395 of the client population. One has to wonder how statistically significant this is?
- Facebook ranked last out of all digital marketing options with an average score of 3.54. However, the study notes that the survey is “not guaranteed to be representative of the population, and, unless otherwise noted, statistical data is intended to be used for descriptive and not inferential purposes,” according to the company it was run through, e-Rewards/Research Now.
“There are 13 types of marketing Forrester compares in the chart BI shared and, unfortunately, with a spread in marketer satisfaction of just 8 percent from lowest to highest, the differences are likely not statistically significant.”
Moreover, at AdParlor, we have the opportunity to work with hundreds of clients. Our experience flies in the face of the Forrester “facts.” Our clients have seen great results with the new retargeting efforts, Facebook exchange product and News Feed targeting for specific campaigns.
Ultimately, the market bears this out as well. Four billion in advertising revenue and a rising stock price are fairly indicative of a platform succeeding in specifically target customers.
Forrester’s Nate Elliott claims Facebook is not doing a good job driving engagement between companies and customers and is mismanaging the advertising side of the business.
With the Q3 earnings report hot off the presses this afternoon, the facts of the market don’t support Forrester’s assertion. Facebook’s revenue and earnings-per-share numbers beat Wall Street estimates by a wide margin. Predictably, after-hours trading sent Facebook shares soaring to an all-time high.
If that’s a sign of a company failing at its mission, we should all be so lucky.