In my opinion, Facebook is the superior social media platform for marketing and advertising. Facebook has a larger database of interests and likes for each person because they have the direct data of what pages you like and interact with, who you're friends with, and basic personal data that must be recorded to create an account. They know where you've previously lived, what your job is, and even what high school you went to. With all of this information available to Facebook, they are able to allow advertisers and marketers to be incredibly specific when narrowing down a target market on Facebook advertising. For example, if I were trying to create an advertisement for an entertainment law firm located in Santa Monica, I could select an audience for the sponsored ad that includes the following criteria: an adult over the age of 30, lives in Santa Monica or the greater Los Angeles area, has a college degree, follows at least one actor's Facebook page, and works at a major record label, production studio, or talent agency. This would allow the law firm to be more cost efficient because they have narrowed millions of Facebook users down to a few thousand users.
Instagram and Facebook have similar features for sponsored posts. Both social media platforms have "Sponsored Post" at the top of each paid advertisement. Instagram has more influencers who's post may not be paid for, but they are labeled as an ad in the caption as opposed to the top of a post where the location might be. I don't believe that this creates one as a better platform to use for sponsored posts. A larger concern for sponsored posts is seen through Facebook's latest announcement, which stated that newsfeeds will feature less sponsored material and feature more posts shared by friends in an effort to satisfy users. This may make it more expensive to sponsor a post on Facebook because you will be bidding for fewer spots.
Overall, Facebook has proven itself to be a stronger platform to sponsor posts on due to the ability to have a high selectivity in the audience that you wish to see your advertisement. Although Instagram has less selectivity, they have still proven to be a strong platform to sponsor on and they feature more avenues to do so through, such as an influencer.
Nick Janner, a student in Jon Pfeiffer's Spring 2018 Media Law class at Pepperdine University, wrote the above essay in response to the following question: Between Facebook and Instagram, which do you think is more effective for marketing and why? Can you tell a post is sponsored more easily on one or the other? If so, do you think that's a positive or a negative?
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