Facebook: Still Considered Owned Media?
If you have been using Facebook for your brand activities since 2011-2012, you would have realised that organic reach has dipped massively throughout these few years. Even if you had spent a bomb building up a fanbase in the past, you’d still need to continue investing ad dollars to engage the same fanbase.
So should Facebook still be classified as owned media? Or should it be considered paid/earned media? We ask some industry practitioners for their views.
Facebook has evolved in this day and age, to becoming an accessible springboard to having Owned Media online. The irony of that situation is that this ease of setup builds a dependency on the platform over time, that then holds you hostage to it, due to all the memories and context you’ve built and accumulated on it.
Philip Tnee: Head of Sales at PurpleClick
Organically, you can only reach about 5% or less of the fan base on your Facebook page, to reach other 95% you still have to spend money to boost your content. I would just consider Facebook as Paid Media.
Kester Poh: Managing Director at KACE DIGITAL
Facebook behaves like a hybrid of owned, earned and paid media, but it should not be considered owned media. Treating Facebook as owned media is an illusion because while Facebook allows users and brands to publish content like owned media, create marketing campaigns like paid media and has social sharing mechanics to facilitate earned media, it is anything but. This is because brand pages and personal profiles do not own any of the data collected by Facebook, and they are not your audience, but Facebook “lending” their audience to you. If Facebook were to collapse tomorrow, you would not have any more access to that customer data.
Brian Koh: Head of Content & Social Media at Hustla & Co
It depends: if your perspective is that Facebook is where you primarily distribute content and engage your consumers socially then it is owned media. But honestly, no one expects content to spread organically anymore, so marketers are forced to pay to get views. From that perspective, Facebook is more paid media than owned media.
Yeong Yee: Senior Consultant at Ogilvy
The only media that you truly own is your website and email database. All other channels are auxiliary, including Facebook. Do not confuse your priorities when building your brand. Drive traffic to your owned media, collect leads on your owned media, grow sales on your owned media. It is simply not wise to rely on any other channel nowadays, given the way and frequency they change their policies and algorithms.
Michael Lin: Director at Fyooz Studio
In today’s digital space, when a consumer considers purchasing or finding out more about your product or service, where do they go to? It used to be “Do you have a website? What’s your website address?” Today, they would go to Facebook, do a search and find your business page. Do you exist? What content have you been sharing which talks about your organization and its beliefs? Even without paid media, there are organic searches and visits to your Facebook page from the word of mouth that talks about you and your store front or service. So, is your Facebook page still considered owned media? I’ll leave it to you to decide.
Rachel Poo: Business Development Director at Standices
