The advertising dilemma in a post-fact world

Cue an influx of misinformation, bots, non-brand-safe content, and potentially a sharp fall in users and advertising revenue, similar to what occurred on X. 

Since Musk acquired Twitter in 2022—renaming it X and ditching fact-checking—the platform lost seven million monthly active users. Meanwhile, X's advertising revenue has plummeted from US$4.5 billion in 2022 to approximately US$2.2 billion in 2023, representing a staggering 46.4% year-on-year decrease. Analysts predict that this downward trajectory will persist, with revenues potentially dropping below US$2 billion in 2025. 

It's a tough act to beat, but it now looks as though Meta is certainly going to give it a try. Recently, Mark Zuckerberg announced plans to eliminate fact-checkers on his platforms and promote increased political content, potentially in response to Donald Trump's earlier threat that Zuckerberg would "spend the rest of his life in prison" if he caused trouble for him. Pleasing Trump could mean making many others unhappy, ultimately losing users and advertising revenue. Looks like a risk that Zuckerberg is willing to take. 

"In Meta’s playbook, apparent political pandering aside, lax restrictions and limited enforcement breeds more engagement, which means more to monetise," says Arielle Garcia, chief operating officer of Check My Ads. "And less investment in compliance and policy enforcement directly equates to stronger margins. It is as simple as that."

The transparency imperative

In truth, Meta’s interest in combatting harmful or unlawful content on its platforms has always been largely reactive and performative. Remember that Meta also sees a future where its platform is filled with AI-generated profiles that boost engagement.

And when legitimate users leave, Meta isn’t above overstating its reach. This same company is still fighting a legal battle with advertisers over the inflation of advertising metrics.

"Ultimately, the reality stands that if Meta wanted to serve advertisers well, it would allow them to perform true independent measurement and verification, with granular visibility into where their ads appear," adds Garcia. "Meta has never done this."

It remains to be seen whether the change from fact-checking to community notes will mean that brands appear more frequently next to content they don’t want to be associated with. Each brand will need to make this determination, but making an informed decision would require transparency from Meta.

"This transparency is really what marketers should be pushing for, as a matter of brand stewardship and effective media investment," says Garcia. "In addition, advertisers should look to understand whether Meta will monetise content corrected via community notes and how advertisers will be able to exercise choice over whether their ads appear next to this content. Similarly, advertisers should begin understanding what Meta’s plans are for monetising these AI profiles, lest brands end up paying for bots chatting back and forth."

But Meta possesses a significant advantage over X in terms of scale and reach, which may lead to a different outcome in terms of brands—both big and small—being less likely to walk away. 

"Some might hit pause to see how these changes play out, but Meta’s reach, targeting power, and ROI are hard to beat," says Eb Adeyeri, VP paid social and partnerships at Jellyfish. "We’ve seen similar concerns with platforms like X before, and they usually lead to short-term pullbacks rather than permanent exits. Instead of moving budgets elsewhere, advertisers are more likely to adjust their strategies and make it work within Meta."

So, if indeed advertisers do decide to persevere with Meta, are there measures they can take to safeguard against increased brand safety risks?

"Advertisers need to take a closer look at advanced brand safety tools, lean into contextual targeting, and make transparency a priority in their messaging," says Adeyeri. "To tackle misinformation, it’s also about focusing on storytelling and finding ways to build trust with audiences. In this post-truth era, it’s all about striking the right balance between reaching a wide audience and maintaining credibility."

Fern Potter, SVP strategy & partnerships at Multilocal, says that advertisers looking to navigate the post-truth era could instead turn to the open web for third-party options to independently audit, compare, and evaluate their media investments. 

"Walled gardens lack this transparency, making them less accountable and leaving advertisers with limited ways to ensure fair and unbiased assessments of their campaigns," says Potter. "Advertisers who rely on these platforms are required to use the proprietary technology and tools within the closed ecosystem to understand ad performance, measurement, and insights. This creates a dynamic where the walled gardens are essentially ‘grading their own homework’."

Meanwhile, Traci Asbury, social media investment lead for Goodway Group, says that advertisers' investments in Meta apps will depend on their tolerance for ad waste, contextual brand safety, brand recognition, and revenue loss. 

"Under the community notes model, bot activity is likely to increase, causing fraudulent delivery and skewed performance metrics," says Asbury. "By investing in third-party brand safety measures, advertisers will need to account for rising costs and more time dedicated to maintaining its efficacy."

Should advertisers choose to stay the course with their 2025 paid social investments, Asbury advises that brand safety strategy should move to the forefront of media plans: "In-platform inventory filters on Meta have been updated to include more than Audience Network domains, and, at minimum, should be applied to all campaigns based on brand safety requirements." 

Will brands re-orient around quality media?

And for the advertisers who decide to walk away from Meta, where will they move to next? Will trusted and reputable news publishers gain from this and see an uptick in ad spend?

"It’s pretty unlikely that brands will completely abandon Meta, but we might see some shifting their budgets toward trusted news publishers—especially those looking for more controlled, credible spaces," says Adeyeri. "That said, these publishers usually don’t have the scale or targeting capabilities that Meta offers, so a full migration isn’t on the cards. Instead, advertisers are likely to spread their budgets around, putting some toward reputable publishers while still investing in Meta for its unmatched reach. It’s all about finding a balance between performance and credibility."

But in many ways, Meta’s abandonment of fact-checking highlights the difference between premium media journalism and social media.

"News media has a gatekeeping editorial office that makes sure that content, primarily produced by pre-vetted staff, comes out without factual errors and in a blend that doesn’t promote a biased worldview," says Amanda Mattsson, marketing manager of Brand Metrics. "Social media doesn’t have an editorial office, and it’s always been easy enough to flood social media with content that might be factually correct, or at least not wrong, but in sheer volumes promote all kinds of one-sided world views."

From this perspective, premium news media has always been brand-safe, and social media has never been brand-safe. Meta-ditching fact-checking doesn’t fundamentally change this.

"The reason, however, that Brand Metrics repeatedly demonstrate higher brand lift in premium environments than in platforms where the content is user-generated has more to do with attentiveness, trust, and speed than with brand safety," adds Mattsson. "People typically consume news slowly and with interest, while they only scroll feeds and reels with speed and disengagement. So, whether more reputable news media will see an uptick in advertising has more to do with their ability to demonstrate that it works than it has with them having fewer flat-earthers creating the content."

As dominant platforms exploit their power, and marketers continue to be confronted with instances where they have paid a premium for dodgy data and broken verification while their ads reach fake people on AI spam, we are nearing a tipping point.

"Advertisers will recognise that blindly relying on opaque data and tech to chase audiences doesn’t cut it and that they need to be attentive to the media inventory they’re purchasing and the supply paths they’re purchasing it through," says Garcia. "While it likely won’t manifest as brands en masse deciding to fund news, as brands re-orient around quality media and transparent supply chains, this will create opportunity for legitimate publishers."