Facebook Is Culling The Herd Of Low-Quality Ad Partners It Created

Facebook's advertising partners reacted to Business Insider's story on the company's new "no pay, no play" policy for companies that want access to its Preferred Marketing Developer program.

They like it, because it might cull the herd of low-quality companies that are now Facebook PMD members, executives told AdExchanger. There are about 300 companies in the PMD program, many of whom do pretty much the same thing as all the rest of them. A lot of them simply sift Facebook data, or provide management tools to marketers who publish on Facebook, but they don't directly channel paid ad dollars to the social network.

Previously, the PMD program (which serves advertisers who want to have a presence on Facebook and learn more about the social network's capabilities) was open to companies that only wanted Facebook's free pages for companies, or those who provided analytic and measurement services that did not include paid ad buys.

The new policy requires companies to focus on paid advertising of some kind.

Right on cue, We Are Social, a social media agency that previously concentrated on consulting, research and content engagement, just told Business Insider that it would now offer paid media services in Facebook. The company poached David Gilbert, the former head of sales/client services at TBG Digital, one of Facebook's largest media buyers, to run the new offering.

Jeff Dachis, CEO of the Dachis Group, told AdEx: "Facebook’s explosive growth in users since the launch of the PMD program triggered a parallel explosion in the number of PMDs on the site, the result has been diminishing quality among the firms that have the designation. This drop in quality sorely needed to be addressed."

Two of his competitors, Optimal CEO Rob Leathern and Kinetic Social CEO Don Mathis agreed with him. Read their full comments here.

Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.

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