If you are somewhat confused by the Facebook rebrand, and what it means for business then don’t worry too much - you are certainly not alone. The good news though is that you have nothing to worry about. Down below we have detailed everything that you need to know about the rebrand, and what it might mean for Facebook Advertising.
The rebrand, in a neat nutshell
Thursday, 28th October 2021. This is the date that the social media behemoth rebranded its parent company from Facebook to Meta - a Social Technology Company. This is just the first step on the road to “an overhaul de-emphasizing Facebook’s name and rebranding itself as Meta.”
This came with a new logo - a kind of stylized infinity loop, which is rather fitting even if it isn’t immediately obvious; the word Meta is Greek and it means beyond. So, if Meta is meant to be the beginning of a so-called ‘metaverse’, it would follow that we can think of it as being beyond our current reality.
Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that he aims to move his company into the next ‘digital frontier’, which will see the combining of digital worlds. For now, however, the company rebrand merely means that the business will start trading under the ticker “MVRS” on the 1st of December.
What impact will the rebrand have on Facebook Advertising?
The short answer is not a thing.
For the moment, Facebook’s rebranding is almost entirely cosmetic. The change affects only the parent company, not the companies that live under its umbrella. So, subsidiary companies such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. will not be affected.
All of this means that:
● There will not be any changes to the customer experience or how people interact with the platform
● There are not going to be any changes on the backend for advertisers
● There will also be no alterations in the way that advertisers use ad products
The only noticeable change, at the time of writing, is that Facebook very quietly and without fanfare rebranded its Facebook for Business page to Meta for Business. This may well be a little alarming to you, because in the past when there have been shifts in Facebook or Instagram’s algorithms, sales have been decimated for a lot of people. At the moment at least, there are no changes in the way that business advertisers use the platform.
So, why did Facebook rebrand this way?
Facebook has said that this new name, Meta, better encompasses everything that they do and this will enable them to widen their reach beyond social media and into virtual and augmented reality technologies.
The rebrand does however come at an apt time. The renaming of Facebook, together with the PR push that came with it, could be construed as an attempt for the company to put distance between itself and the ongoing negative press at the moment.
Whatever the reasons behind the rebrand, because the ‘metaverse’ does not yet exist, the name change does seem a little pre-emptive. But, at least for the moment, we can rest easy knowing that nothing has changed for advertisers. For now.