So what has happened to the Christmas ads missing millions?
Last week we noted that YouTube views seems to be down across the piece and it seems that the same has happened to Facebook shares (bigger numbers than YouTube in some instances).
In the past “organic” views have provided, in effect, a free TV channel for advertisers, not just at Christmas. But both the social media behemoths have been putting more effort into selling “promoted” views recently and there are dark mutterings among media agencies that they’ve changed their algorithms so that organic views hit a ceiling much earlier than in previous years.
Agencies and then advertisers are then invited to boost their numbers by paying for them. Both channels have unofficially denied any such policy.
Big budget Christmas ads depend on lots of free airtime to justify their high production costs. The norm is to run them first on a big audience programme like X Factor (although X Factor’s audience is falling), then minority digital TV channels and then YouTube, Facebook et al.
And there are lots of other media outlets, John Lewis Moz the Monster gifs are popping up all over the place.
But Google and Facebook seem to be saying that they want more of this particular Christmas pie.
