80% of advertisers: Facebook not as important as the rest of the web

Facebook better hurry up and re-send that friend request to GM. Other advertisers are starting to catch on that there's more to the advertising world than the world's largest social network.

In fact, according to a June study by 33Across, almost three quarters of advertisers said that "they focus 80% of their attention on the "Rest of Web," not on Facebook. That's a 23 percent jump from just three months ago, in March. Even worse for Facebook, five times as many advertisers as in March now said they were planning on "decreasing [their] Facebook spend."

That's a massive pre-IPO to post-IPO change.

"What was particularly surprising to me was the dramatic shift in advertiser and agency attitudes towards Facebook after the IPO," Allie Kline, chief marketing officer for 33Across said in a statement. "Facebook's future greatly depends on advertiser spend — on both the web and mobile devices — and this survey indicates that they have some work to do to restore advertiser confidence in their Facebook investments."

You can see the difference in the chart below. 33Across asked advertisers what gets more of their attention: Facebook or the rest of the web (ROW)?

In March, only 58 percent said that the rest of the web had most of their attention. But in June, that number jumps to 71 percent. Add that to the 11 percent who do a 40:60 split between Facebook ads and the rest of the web, and you've got a full 80% of advertisers who are looking mostly away from Facebook for the majority of their ad spend.

The study also showed that integrating a global picture of all advertising regardless of platform is critically important to marketers. As Facebook becomes a lower overall priority, it is treated less as a category to itself and more just as one more channel to market. Now advertisers want to integrate all the marketing data they are collecting and understand global return on investment.

Facebook is on the offensive, having released a report with ComScore in June on how to do social media marketing. And information released by eMarketer recently suggests that the Facebook advertising story is in fact better than has been reported. But overall, the post-IPO story has not been a particularly positive one for the world's largest social network.

And this report shows the company still has some work to do.

Source: http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/03/80-of-advertisers-facebook-not-as-important-as-the-rest-of-the-web/