Facebook will soon cut unpaid brand ads

The social media platform announced it will penalize “overly promotional” page posts in 2015 by significantly reducing the offending company’s organic reach.

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The low organic reach your company page is getting on Facebook is about to get a lot lower.

Facebook announced Friday that brand posts deemed “overly promotional” by its algorithm will be curtailed. The translation: Expect your reach to drop even more than it’s already dropped.

What makes a post “overly promotional?” Facebook has three criteria it outlines in its blog:

The post goes on to deliver the final punishing blow: “All of this means that Pages that post promotional creative should expect their organic distribution to fall significantly over time.”

There you have it, social media marketers. We knew this day was coming (and there may be more like it), but Facebook is officially a pay-to-play venue for brands now.

Is it a good thing for users? Who knows. Why would someone “like” a page if they didn’t want to see its updates? It strikes me that if a person doesn’t like what a brand is posting, they would just stop following that brand.

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