Over the last year and a half, Facebook has been embroiled in so many controversial issues, it’s hard to keep track: privacy problems, the spread of misinformation, election interference, improperly secured data, antitrust concerns and, most recently, Facebook’s policy on paid political advertising, which is rubbing nearly everyone, including some of Facebook’s own employees, the […]
Facebook’s ongoing PR nightmare didn’t impact its quarterly earnings – yet again. On Wednesday, Facebook reported $17.7 billion in revenue for the third quarter, up 28.6% year over year, beating the consensus by a cool $300 million. The company’s stock rose nearly 5% in after-hours trading. Mark Zuckerberg kicked off the earnings call with a […]
On the menu in Washington, DC, today: Mark Zuckerberg, served skewered and moderately grilled by House reps during a hearing on Facebook’s impact on the financial services and housing sectors. Most of the questions he faced were skeptical queries about the potential pitfalls of Facebook’s attempted foray into cryptocurrency with Libra, which Rep. Brad Sherman, […]
Facebook is shoring up its political advertising policies in advance of the 2020 US presidential election, which, god help us all, looms large on the horizon. In a press call on Monday, Mark Zuckerberg laid out the steps Facebook has taken and will take to try and make sure that 2020 isn’t 2016 all over […]
Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Big Guns Vs. Google Comcast’s FreeWheel unit told a congressional task force last month that Google used privacy concerns to limit FreeWheel and other video advertising companies from selling ads for its clients on YouTube. Other ad tech and cable companies have spoken out […]
Last year, Mark Zuckerberg went on a Cambridge Analytica apology tour. This year, he’s got a new theme: DC, bring on your regs. In the absence of regulation, “we’re going to do the best we can,” the Facebook CEO said Wednesday during a fireside chat at the annual Aspen Ideas Festival. But private companies, he […]
Mark Zuckerberg has four top priorities for Facebook in the year ahead – but stepping down as chairman of the board ain’t one of them. At Facebook’s annual stockholders meeting on Thursday, numerous resolutions to create a check on Zuckerberg’s power – he simultaneously serves as chair of the board and CEO – were vetoed, as expected. Although […]
Facebook says it’s finally going to start rolling out its long-overdue Clear History feature “in the coming months.” That activation means Facebook will have less access to certain forms of targeting data. On Tuesday, Facebook warned advertisers that the tool, which will eventually give people the ability to see and delete the data that third-party […]
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Mark Zuckerberg penned a lengthy post last week laying out Facebook’s vision for a “privacy-focused” future – but it’s not going to change Facebook’s business model. Although Zuckerberg expends a lot of ink on the importance of data security and protecting messaging with end-to-end encryption, he doesn’t mention the interest and user-related data that powers Facebook’s […]
Between “fake news” and lawsuits, few tech companies have been busier than Facebook. As a result, the platform’s technological ethos is changing. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has hinted that the company might phase out its classic news feed to focus on its Stories and Messenger features. Among these new avenues for monetization is Facebook Watch, […]
Snap Fizzle? This year, eMarketer estimates Snapchat will bring in $662.1 million in US ad revenue, a significant drop from the $1.03 billion it had projected last March. “We now expect that Snap will not break $1 billion in US ad revenue until 2020,” according to the revised figures. The downgrade is mainly due to […]
Anyone hoping for an intense grilling of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his testimony Tuesday before European politicians in Brussels can keep on waiting. Zuckerberg trotted out familiar talking points and was sheltered from the intensity and awkward eye contact of real interrogation by a strange format, in which members of the EU Parliament asked […]
As Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faced a second congressional grilling on Wednesday in Washington, DC, the company’s VP of ads and business product, Mark Rabkin, addressed a more ad-savvy audience at Programmatic I/O in San Francisco. The takeaway in SF: Facebook will continue to make policy changes to the way data is handled on its […]
“We didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and I’m sorry.” A contrite yet confident Mark Zuckerberg, wearing a suit rather than his usual gray T-shirt and jeans, testified Tuesday before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees in Washington, […]
In Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s prepared statement for Congress, he describes how his company hopes to prevent illicit data sharing and enhance transparency around political advertising. The testimony, which will be delivered Wednesday, partially reiterates changes that Facebook publicized last week. Last Wednesday, Facebook detailed API data restrictions. And last Friday, it described the tools […]
A blog post by Facebook Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer on Wednesday detailed restrictions on data access for a number of its APIs, including events, groups and pages. Read it. (The blog also revealed in that post that Cambridge Analytica had harvested 87 million profiles, rather than 50 million, as was originally widely reported.) Developer […]
#WheresZuck? Posting a mea culpa on Facebook after nearly five days of conspicuous silence. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which broke over the weekend, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took to Facebook to explain what happened and to outline fixes. He promised Facebook would investigate all apps that had “access to large amounts […]
Under mounting pressure over its use by Russian meddlers in the US election, Facebook is imposing new transparency on ad buyers to make it harder to obscure who paid for an ad, and who saw it. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes in a Facebook Live video posted Thursday afternoon. “When someone buys political ads […]
Investors are putting Facebook’s feet to the fire about fake news. At the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting on Thursday, investors questioned CEO Mark Zuckerberg about how Facebook is combatting the spread of false news on its platform. Advertisers have become increasingly sensitive to brand safety issues since the YouTube/Google Display Network debacle kicked off in […]
Facebook’s mobile ad growth was the big story in Q1, as ads served to handheld devices grew to 30% of all advertising revenue. Read the earnings release, or check out these highlights on the ad side: Total ad revenue grew 43% to $1.25 billion Mobile accounted for roughly 30% all Facebook ad dollars in Q1, […]
Facebook made solid progress on generating ad revenue, especially through growing use of its less than five-month-old Facebook Exchange and its aggressive focus on mobile advertising. At the same time, Facebook’s desire to spread itself and its products as widely and quickly as possible, particularly in developing countries, resulted in huge expenses — costs were […]
An hour after producing a Q3 earnings report that exceeded Wall St. analysts’ expectations, Facebook CEO and chairman Mark Zuckerberg came out swinging against doubts about the social network’s mobile footing. “I want to dispel this myth we can’t make money on mobile,” Zuckerberg said in prepared remarks. “The reason is, we haven’t really tried […]
