In some methods, Fb’s new ad marketing campaign appears to defeat the aim of individuals truly utilizing the app in 2025. However on the similar time, it additionally highlights essential associated advantages of this app. Maybe that is why so many individuals maintain checking their Fb feed day-after-day.
Since you’re not logging in to “think about” your self in an AI-generated picture or take a look at the newest movies. Open the Fb app and see if anybody you are related to has shared any notes.
This ad showcases it effectively.
Fb’s first ad marketing campaign in 4 years, dubbed “A Little Connection Goes a Lengthy Approach,” goals to spotlight the worth of connection within the lead-up to the vacation season.
It is a fascinating reminder of Fb’s energy to deliver folks collectively, even when, as talked about above, that is not what persons are truly utilizing the app for nowadays.
In actual fact, Meta’s personal knowledge reveals that consumption of Reels is at present the driving power behind Fb utilization and the one factor producing elevated engagement.
Final 12 months, Meta reported that Reels views accounted for 60% of all person time spent on Fb, however Meta additionally reported in its second quarter efficiency replace (August of this 12 months) that point spent on video content material elevated by greater than 20% year-over-year.
This means that a big portion of the cumulative time customers spend on the app is spent watching Reel clips, relegating the relevance advantages highlighted on this marketing campaign.
However then once more, why verify Fb day-after-day?
The issue is: What I believe (however can’t conclusively show with out inner knowledge) is that Fb utilization, when it comes to cumulative time spent, has decreased considerably. But everybody checks their Fb feed day-after-day to see if household pals or previous classmates have shared something of curiosity.
Fb is now a precious useful resource for internet hosting birthdays and celebrations on-line, which is why the variety of lively customers on Fb stays excessive. Nonetheless, I doubt that almost all of individuals spend a lot time on this app. Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok could take up much more of our cumulative consideration.
However once more, there are just a few methods to point out this.
Up to now, Fb would share updates on how a lot time customers spent on its apps as a part of common efficiency studies. For instance, in 2016, customers was spending extra Common 50 minutes per dayFb, Instagram, Messenger.
Nonetheless, this was the final replace to this ingredient, and the meta now solely studies total lively customers as an alternative. It is a very totally different measure, however once more, Fb has an enormous variety of lively customers (over 3 billion customers), and it appears a lot better for Meta to report that Fb utilization continues to be excessive than to share that precise app utilization time has decreased.
Nonetheless, this has been confirmed as effectively, albeit in a distinct format.
Earlier this 12 months, as a part of Meta’s authorized battle with the FTC, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged the period of time folks spend on each companies. Fb and Instagram have “considerably declined,” with extra conversations shifting to messaging as an alternative.
Particularly, sharing amongst pals has decreased, As proven within the slides from Mr. Mehta’s courtroom presentation:
As you may see from these graphs, the time spent viewing content material posted by pals inside apps decreased from 22% in 2023 to 17% in 2025.
And what’s nonetheless technically thought-about a “social” media app already accounts for under a tiny 22%, with the majority of the remainder dedicated to video content material.
Meta would not share the newest common time spent utilizing the app per person, however once more, we are able to assume it is now considerably lower than 50 minutes per person per day. This helps the concept that most customers are merely checking in to see posts from family and friends, and are probably visiting different apps afterward.
Will that cut back the worth of Fb? Properly, it depends upon the way you outline worth. In case your objective is to have a broad attain, Fb continues to be the place to be, however should you assume persons are spending their time scrolling by their information feeds, I feel that is most likely not the case.
What’s additionally attention-grabbing is that Meta is attempting to attract customers in with content material that emphasizes the advantages of that connection whereas spitting out AI instruments at each flip that don’t have anything to do with human connection.
Both manner, what’s attention-grabbing about this marketing campaign is that though Fb is aware of it is not a fundamental a part of the app, it is attempting to benefit from its connectivity capabilities. Nonetheless, it’s nonetheless an essential connection device, and promoting performs a task on this, which may assist drive extra curiosity consequently.
Mainly, this can be a long-winded manner of claiming that this can be a good ad, even when it would not immediately match how folks use Fb every day. And there is a good probability extra folks will probably be checking in over the vacations to meet up with previous pals.
