Are Brands Becoming Numb To Brand Safety As Meta Departs From Fact-Checking?

(MENAFN- PRovoke) Early this month, Meta announced that it would end its third-party fact-checking program and move to a Community Notes model instead. It said it would allow more speech by lifting restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse and focusing its enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations. It also said that it would take a more personalised approach to Political content so that people who want to see more of it in their feeds can do so.

“We've seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context, and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see. We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they're seeing – and one that's less prone to bias,” wrote Meta in a statement.

As most of us know though, this approach did not exactly end well with X. In fact, X has seen its favorability with marketers plummet over the years since Elon Musk took over. According to a 2024 Kantar study, only 4% of marketers think X ads provide brand safety as compared to the 39% Google boasts. Marketers' overall trust for X ads have fallen from 22% to 12% since 2022, it said.

While a net 15% of marketers were favorable towards X ads in 2022, now a net 21% of marketers are unfavorable, Kantar's study went on to add. It also found that 26% of marketers globally now plan to decrease their spending in X in 2025.

Brand safety has arguably taken on much greater importance following this decision by Meta. CCOs, CMOs and marketing leaders really have to take a hard look at when and where their brand is going to appear, knowing in some cases they have no control over what appears alongside it, according to Jason Ouellette, partner and co-founder of Escalate PR. This decision also puts the onus on these leaders and internal teams to rethink where they're putting their efforts when it comes to brand awareness.

“Should they be much more industry-focused? More vertically aligned with their offerings? Are the social platforms even worth the risk? These are all important questions that each brand has to tackle on their own,” said Ouellette.

He added that if brands stay on Meta, it may become more expensive to ensure brand safety. There will be the need for more targeting and monitoring to make sure a brand is appearing in places that meet its own mission and vision. Guardrails too will still matter, perhaps even more since the stakes are higher to maintain brand safety.

Saying that, Werner Iucksch, SVP, head of social, APAC at Monks is of the opinion that the change of policy is unlikely to spook advertisers.“This decision to remove the internal fact-checking resources resurfaced the brand safety agenda, which is positive, but much of the concern is premature. Meta is not fully removing all safeguards. There are additional tools within the Meta ad management system to ensure advertisers are not coming side by side with opinions or behavior that doesn't match their corporate ethos,” he explained.“Meta will also implement other tools such as the community notes. Brands should keep an eye on this and work with their agency partners to identify and mitigate issues - but we don't yet have evidence of negative outcomes for most advertisers.”

He added that firstly, Meta is too big to keep out of media plans, second, the brand safety risks are most likely to follow ideology or politics lines - as opposed to criminal issues, which continue to be banned.

“It's important to notice the Meta platforms' algorithms are distinct from X's - as in it keeps you within your group of closer connection more - meaning it is most likely going to keep“ideological lanes” somewhat separate and resulting in content served aligned to pre-existing interests and points of view. And less risk as an outcome. There will be hiccups and headlines - but it's unlikely to see it heading the same way we saw with X,” he said.

Are brands becoming numb to brand safety?

Saying that, are brands today simply becoming immune to brand safety issues considering the plethora of opinions and information out there? Curtis Hougland, founder and CEO of People First, thinks this is indeed the case.

“The degradation of social media discourse is a decade in the making, cultivating a political climate that has alleviated some of the brand safety requirements. At the same time, brands cannot afford to omit social advertising from their plans, especially at a time when both recall and conversion from lo-fi ads greatly outperform brand-produced ads online,” he explained.

Hougland added that while they may slow their buys until they witness the real impact of Meta's decision to remove fact-checking on the platform, he does not think overall spending will diminish significantly in 2025.

“X is a hot mess. The quality of the ads on the platform are really poor and often akin to a late-night Fox News commercial. Musk politicized his decisions for X, demonstrating a path not worth taking for any social media platform looking to bring in revenue,” said Hougland.“Zuckerberg is not truly a political animal in the same way. Meta has perhaps the best ad-targeting functionality on the planet. It is massive. If TikTok is indeed banned domestically, advertising on Meta becomes even more essential. YouTube's market share will grow, especially with advertising around Shorts.”

He added that the big fear for Meta is a flashpoint that creates a herd mentality causing skittish advertisers to move in and out of the platform more reactively – but always ending up back on the platform out of necessity.

Saying that, Hougland noted that brands will always care about guardrails and that Meta continues to add guardrails in areas such as pharma, where they now require brands to register to promote prescriptions.

“Meta is not yet the wild west. I suspect Meta will leave the general population to swim in dirtier waters, but they will tighten up sector-specific guardrails for brands. So someone like Pfizer is more restricted, but it is easier to connect vaccines to autism in public discourse. I would also point to technologies and methodologies adopted by brands to review and approve creators and influencers, to evaluate ad risks and conduct checks such as network composition analyses, which show which communities to target,” he said.

True enough, everything in marketing and communications is decentralizing, according to Hougland.

“Right now, third-party algorithms from Meta and X govern what one sees. It is from the outside in. In the future individuals will choose their algorithm, similarly to how one picks an AI service now. The user, not the platform, will gain more control over what they see beyond blunt signals such as explicit language and engagements,” he said.

He added that in the future, social media will all become more bespoke, decentralized, and horizontal through open-source platforms with increasing specialization.

“All major media has been fragmented from radio to television to the web and now social media. Advertisers will lose the ability to advertise to masses but gain the ability to more surgically target specific, niche communities of consumers. This is what they should be doing now anyway,” he said.

What's next for social media advertising?

According to Iucksch, the only other player that can offer the exposure and reach of Meta is Google, so here's the player with the most to gain (through YouTube and other ways). However, Google may not be interested in distinguishing itself by using the same type of“fact-checking”.

“We think it's more likely that other players will follow Meta's steps - slightly behind so that Meta is the lightning rod of the situation. This is because the key issue is not“facts vs fiction”, it's whether there is left-leaning censorship taking place over perfectly legal speech, opinions and behaviour,” he said.

“Since publishers need audiences of all political persuasions, major platforms and publishers will follow this closely - not only on the PR front but also on the financial front,” he said.“In the last few days, Facebook has also relaxed some restrictions on conservative publishers like the Daily Wire. So the total picture is 'reduce 'censorship' and 'invite right-leaning voices back' and 'reshuffle the board', which is certainly tailored to increase total audience and ad revenue.”

Adding to his point, Wong Hin-Yan, EVP, strategic planning and head, APAC intelligence, Weber Shandwick said that for a start, brands will need to be more cautious in how they craft their marketing messages on Meta's platforms.

“For some consumer products, such as your everyday savoury snacks or household cleaning products, the effect may be limited. For brands that have controversial associations, they might decide to take stock and re-evaluate their approach on Meta,” said Wong

Wong added that for some markets in APAC, local regulations (such as Singapore's POFMA) already address the issue of online falsehood and fake news. So there may be little change.“For other markets, brands have a broader choice of social media platforms for their advertising,” said Wong.

Wong went on to explain that brands will have to invest more in monitoring and tracking their brands – on social media, earned media, and beyond – as part of their ongoing issues tracking and management effort.

Ouellette added to that by saying that the biggest opportunity now is going to be owned content.“Brands today are spinning up their own content hubs and using them as a place where prospects, customers, and employees can get their latest information – whether it be from the brand or other organizations. The decision by Meta could be a boon for those in corporate communications and PR as the ability to get your message and content out in a way that drives influence is controlled to a higher degree,” he said.

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