Facebook’s fight against spam and clickbait and what it means for advertisers

Facebook has overhauled its News Feed algorithm in response to critics -- including advertisers -- questioning the quality of the environment. Contributor Justin Freid explains how marketers should shift their strategies in response. It is no secret Facebook has made many changes over the past few months to eliminate low-quality content from its News Feed. At first, the changes were directly related to eliminating content that could be seen as “engagement bait.” From there, Facebook communicated with the public on upcoming changes to its algorithm by telling advertisers, “We built Facebook to help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us. That’s why we’ve always put friends and family at the core of the experience.” These moves may be an effort to head off concerns expressed by big spenders like Unilever, with its $9.8 billion annual media budget, which has warned both Facebook and Google that it will stop advertising on platforms that provide havens for “toxic” content — fake news, extremist, racist, sexist and exploitative content.