25
votes
Mark Zuckerberg statement suggests that Meta could create ads for businesses directly, eliminating role of ad agencies
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Mark Zuckerberg just declared war on the entire advertising industry
- Authors
- Nilay Patel
- Published
- May 1 2025
- Word count
- 726 words
Eh, I don't think he just declared war. But of course he would like to dominate that area of commerce.
I'm pretty sure Facebook is slowly dying, though. I don't think very many young folks are getting on there. I think the platform is slowly aging. I think it will slowly become less and less relevant.
I know most of the folks I know don't post a whole lot out there. Certainly it's hard to find recent posts from friends. You have to jump through hoops and it's still so full of spam and crap that it's just not worth the time.
And frankly, I've found that while I like a little of what my friends post..........most of it is crap. So I'm seeking out the occasional meh-level stuff from all the absolute spam.
I think Mark can do what he likes, but I don't see much success coming his way.
Facebook is on a downswing, but it’s important to remember just how big it is. 3 billion monthly active users on a planet of 8 billion is kind of insane.
Zuck has been smart to diversify as well. Instagram does well with younger audiences in the west, and reels is driving user growth.
Let’s not forget WhatsApp. In Latin America, Europe, and India WhatsApp is immensely important. Especially in India - it practically is the internet there. It’s not just a chat app, it’s also social media and how people buy things. That’s 1 billion people in India alone.
Worth noting that the DC district court is currently hearing arguments in an antitrust case against Meta for acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp and that the FTC are pushing to have them spun off. Hard to say where it'll go at this stage, but that fact seems relevant when you bring those two services up.
It's only slowly dying in the West. In many parts of the world where widespread internet adoption happened Post-Facebook and social media, Facebook is essentially the internet. And most of these places vastly outweigh the population of the West/Global North.
Dying as social media with individual interaction, definitely. But FB still does quite well as a quasi-forum (including for niche subjects, such as garden tractors) and as a Craigslist competitor.
My impression is that they have fully won the war against Craigslist. Seems like everything is on Marketplace now, which I rather despise.
Forget Craigslist and Marketplace. We sold our house through Facebook Chatter, it never went on the market. My mom just mentioned we were planning to list it on a post complaining about a lack of family houses in the area and she got inundated with interested replies, including one woman who planned to fly in to tour it from out-of-state. We made a deal with the second couple to arrange an impromptu tour for the price we wanted, no realtor's fee. Pretty sure the buyers sold their house the same way, too.
Today was day two of our neighborhood's garage sale, and one customer today was a realtor who indicated that's increasingly common right now. I loathe Facebook with a passion, but it's proving to be a useful forum for this sort of thing just because it helps total strangers connect.
Minor update: we messaged the first couple who looked at our house today because we'd offered them some of my old books. Turns out they were closing on a house just down the street today. They'd gone there after buying something off Facebook Marketplace, mentioned looking at our house and loving the neighborhood, and the owners mentioned they planned to list their house soon. The intended price fit their budget, and they made a deal.
So that makes three houses I know of that got sold through Facebook without ever hitting the market. Yeah, I now almost feel like I need to recommend Facebook for anyone searching for a house in a super competitive area because this feels like a definite trend. Downside is it doesn't have a dedicated house hunting platform, so as far as I know you'd have to be checking FB Chatter regularly. And/or make a post saying "there are no good family homes for sale in X city" and hope a potential seller casually mentions their plans like my mom did.
I bought my house after finding it for sale by owner on Facebook marketplace the day or so before she was going to relist it with a realtor and it would have been out of our price range. It was the only one we found that would work for the wheelchair except one that wasn't listed until after we closed if at all that used to be a funeral home.
My realtor found it too so you absolutely can have a good professional working for you and skip looking yourself. But my realtor is one of those very socially connected folks, runs a charity, etc.
Tbh I prefer marketplace over Craigslist. The anonymity of the latter makes it extra hard to screen for scams. Not to say that there isn’t on marketplace but there’s more signs for scammers to slip up when there’s a profile attached.
Craigslists dated UI also limited the number of willing sellers and buyers.
Funny enough my experience is the exact opposite. Marketplace is so filled to the brink with scammers it's unusable, whereas the smaller amount of posts on Craigslist tend to be legit. Also find Craigslist UI a lot easier and faster to use.
I find that Craigslist’s UI actually works, with useable search and location features versus FB Marketplace.
I too continue to use CL as using any meta product is mostly unacceptable to me. It takes a while to sell and commercial spam ads remain a problem but it works well. Since most people seem to have moved to fb mktplace, the number of troll responses to ads is a lot lower ime than when CL was more popular.
It's still highly relevant in some places. I have unfortunately had to increase my Facebook usage since moving to rural Australia (it's often the only simple way to keep up with local businesses and events), but it's still a toxic morass and only getting worse.
To give an example, we just had a historically huge landslide election here in Australia, won by the center-left Labor Party. My local town is extremely progressive, to the point that it's a major tourism hotspot (hitting far above its weight in regards to infrastructure and population size) for its assorted progressive events throughout the year. Additionally, Australian culture does not have the US's political division: people commonly switch the party they vote for from year to year, progressives and conservatives happily socialize and make friends with each other, people speak respectfully to each other about opposing political views, and so on.
But this morning, I looked at the two community Facebook groups for the town, and they are filled to the brim with people making angry, barely coherent, Trumpy comments: the election was clearly rigged, Australia now has a Muslim-majority population, the communists have won and will destroy the country in the next three years, anyone who disagrees should be locked up for life, and so on. Just really insane stuff that is wildly out of character for Australians — and especially our locals. And yet this is somehow the dominant discourse.
While it's particularly bad now in the aftermath of the election, it's honestly always this way. I know that normal people do still use these community groups; they still buy and sell items, ask for business recommendations, and advertise local events — but they silently make their exit the moment the crazies start popping up in the comments. If there were a good local alternative that more effectively blocked inflammatory, off-topic ranting, then I think almost everyone would jump ship immediately and let Facebook rot away.
War is an overstatement and a half, but Google is showing weakness. With the ongoing antitrust lawsuit, many folks realizing Google search sorta sucks, and ChatGPT taking marketshare. If anything, this is the time to strike.
if Facebook were smart, they'd split off WhatsApp, Instagram, Marketplace, etc, use their existing data on every living being to start a dating site, and take another stab at creating original programming (Sorry for Your Loss was pretty good)
Not that this would help their business -- but its the only good stuff they have.
Thank you for your title. When I saw it in the verge I was off put by the wildly emotion inducing title. Still not gonna read the article, but I’m glad it’s even dumber than the original title.
I didn't think the leopards would eat THEIR faces! :[
How does that saying apply in this situation?
I think the implication is that advertising firms were some of the most die-hard users/abusers of third-party AI tech in its early days. Now one of the top services they utilize to canvas their work in front of prospective customers has stated that they want to eliminate the middle man entirely.
Is that actually true, though? I don’t see why advertising firms, which are essential a specific type of creative contracting, would support a race to the bottom. Not to mention, advertising firms don’t exactly “say” things a lot. Are there any examples of this?
The most notable AI generated ads I can think of are by the clients themselves, eg the coke ad.
edit: also, the phrase implies some level of agency, but does Zuck give any kind of shit what ad agencies do? If ad agencies all swore off AI, would that in any way stop Meta from doing this? It’s completely orthogonal.