While the revenue impacts of the Facebook advertising boycott were never expected to amount to much, it does appear that Snap, and to a lesser extent Pinterest, have been benefiting from the protest.
Between July and September, ad spending on Snapchat more than doubled compared to the same period in 2019, and spending on Pinterest increased about 40% according to Mediaocean data, reports The Information.
Some advertisers that paused Facebook spend during the July #StopHateForProfit boycott — which sought to pressure Facebook into doing more to stop the spread of hate speech on its platform — moved their entire budgets to Snapchat, according to Melanie Rhoads of media-buying agency NXD Social, the article reports.
It of course remains to be seen whether the two smaller platforms can hold onto at least some of the revenue gained during the boycott.
After exceeding performance expectations in Q2, Facebook’s revenue growth decelerated during the first three weeks of July. Later that month, Facebook CFO Dave Wehner said the boycott was among the factors likely to limit the platform’s growth to 10% in the third quarter.
Others have pointed out that, other factors aside, the boycott may have even helped Facebook a bit by opening up inventory and thereby enabling an influx of small-business advertisers.
Further, even during July, many big advertisers were already indicating that they planned to increase ad spend in Facebook and other social media in 2021.
Facebook is set to report Q3 results on October 29, after Snap on the 20th and Pinterest on the 28th.