They allegedly fell victim to the whole "pivot to facebook video" craze caused by Facebook misreporting their video engagement figures.
Whether some business unit inside Facebook did this intentionally or not, it's a big reason why I think media companies have turned against Facebook as they feel like they got ratfucked.
Maybe this has already happened, but wouldn't this be grounds for a lawsuit? If businesses are going bankrupt because of outright lies or negligence on a company's part, I would think you have grounds for damages and class-action lawsuit.
I'm speaking out of my butt here, I'm not a lawyer.
This is kind of depressing; I suspect that $40 million is barely a blip in Facebook's advertising budget, so the sad part is that this probably had almost-literally no effect on them.
I guess it's not a new thing for corporations to own the world, but it's always sad when I'm reminded of it.
It is completely intentional, and a company-wide initiative. I have been to several digital marketing conferences and at the big ones there is always a FB speaker/panelist that's there for no other reason than to shill for "video marketing" on FB.
Whether some business unit inside Facebook did this intentionally or not, it's a big reason why I think media companies have turned against Facebook as they feel like they got ratfucked.