Facebook: ‘Dark Posts’ Smell of Desperation, Says BTIG

He's at it again: BTIG Research's Rich Greenfield continues his skeptical disquisition today on Facebook's (FB) quality of content, reiterating a Sell rating and a $22 price target, writing that a phenomenon called “dark posts” is taking advertising further away from context and relevance. (Free registration is required to read BTIG posts.)

Facebook shares today are down 67 cents, or 2.5%, at $25.88.

Greenfield, who had previously warned that ads in the mobile version of Facebook showed a disturbing lack of relevance, today is worried that Facebook is acting in a fashion of desperation with the speed with which it rolls out new ad methods, with dark posts being a means of tying ads to Facebook users' pages that have no interest in the content of the ad:

While Facebook is doing everything it can to drive near-term ad revenues, we would be less negative (currently rated SELL, with $22 target), if the company sought ways of driving revenues beyond advertising that were not so problematic to the consumer/brand experience. We also worry the speed they are rolling out new ad products is a sign that they are struggling to live up to investor expectations for advertising growth in 2013 and beyond.

Greenfield has a long screed on how dark posts are a bad thing for both consumers and brands:

While Facebook has been testing Dark Posts for several months, it has just rolled the advertising product out globally in the past week, albeit it has not focused Facebook users, nor investors on the new ad strategy. While it is bad enough that brands can now target you with suggested ads in the news feed (mobile and desktop) without social context, at least they had to create content for those ads that reached a certain quality bar, as Facebook required news feed sponsored stories and suggested posts to come from posts a brand made to their own page/timeline. With the introduction of Dark Posts, news feed ads (sponsored or suggested) can now be standalone ads that do NOT tie back to the brand�s Facebook page. So while Walmart and many other brands like to use dogs, cats and babies to draw attention to their Facebook ads, they could only use them so often as it would look out of place on that brands Facebook page. Now brands can dream up whatever creative ideas they can think of to drive you to click Like on their brand (with many consumers often tricked into Liking a brand vs. simply liking a picture, as we demonstrated in our September 2012 blog post, click here, note the use of a dog picture). In Facebook�s own Dark Post FAQ sent to brands this week, this is how they describe who should use Dark Posts: �Advertisers running messages that are relevant only to non-fans (�Like this Page to get exclusive information about Brand X!�)� and �Advertisers with ad messages that are not aligned with the tone of the Page (example: DR ads when the Page is mostly about branding)� We expect Dark Posts to bring out the worst in brands and advertisers, as they do not have to live with the consequences of their ad campaign the way they use to on their Facebook brand page.