In ancient times - let's say the last quarter of the 20th The leader in advertising in France was TF1: in 1977, its audience share exceeded 50%!
The price of this hegemony was that, while the channel was able to reach a large number of viewers quickly, it was not able to target specific demographics such as young people or those in upper-income brackets; while its power allowed it to charge very high rates, it was preferred to the free-to-air slots on Canal Plus for communicating with senior executives.
Over the years, its audience share has eroded, particularly with the arrival of DTT but also of cable channels; above all, young people have massively turned away from television to choose an à la carte programme via streaming or simply to chat on social media, particularly Facebook: those who continue to watch it do so very distractedly, while surfing and chatting. Patrick Le Lay's 'available brain time' has shrunk to a trickle.
An ageing audience is never a good sign for any medium: advertisers quickly turn their backs on it, except those selling products aimed at senior citizens.
But what is happening to Facebook today? The social network is mainly recruiting older people who want to stay in touch with their families, while teenagers are abandoning it in droves ...
This is underlined by the latest issues ofeMarketer for the United States and Great Britain: on the other side of the Atlantic, while Facebook continues to grow (+2.4% in 2017), the decline in the 12 to 17 age group is accelerating: -3.4% in 2017 compared with -1.2% in 2016.
While Facebook continues to recruit senior citizens, Snapchat and Instagram are stealing its young ...
With 15.8 million users, Snapchat now leads Facebook (14.5 million) by a narrow margin and is the leading social network among 12 to 24 year-olds, while Instagram has grown by 8.8% in one year among 12 to 17 year-olds. More direct, more streamlined in their ergonomics, more instantaneous, these social networks have renewed the codes of ergonomic identity that are so important on the Internet.
As eMarketer analysts point out, "Facebook is fortunate that it owns Instagram ... except that among the under-25s, Snapchat is the best performer!
With a market share of almost 60%, Google and Facebook dominate - by far - the Internet advertising market, with one holding a lock on Search and the other on Display ... a Display that is very sensitive to the quality of audiences, just as it is for advertising screens on the small screen.
Is Facebook falling victim to the TF1 syndrome? With the risk of acceleration linked to new information technologies: yesterday we counted in decades, today in years, or even months. Aren't we witnessing the fragmentation of social networks? A segmentation that is advancing at the speed of light.
