From Facebook to Meta—a 2021 timeline of the social giant's pivotal year

It has been a tough year for Facebook that culminated in the social behemoth becoming Meta. Ad Age is taking a look back at the major developments at the world’s largest social media company in 2021. Trouble started early in the new year when the company, which boasts 3.6 billion monthly users across all its apps, took a portion of the blame for the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Critics argued that rampant disinformation on Facebook stoked public rage that led to the attack. This set the stage for a year in which Facebook dealt with a host of public safety issues that ultimately led to the company taking unprecedented steps to prove to advertisers that it was tackling brand safety issues head-on. Meanwhile, Facebook also met one of its most aggressive detractors yet in whistleblower Frances Haugen, who leaked documents about the company's internal workings, raising questions about Facebook's community safety problems and the potentially harmful effects of Instagram on teens. The year also brought a shakeup at the top, with high-profile departures that included Carolyn Everson, the longtime head of Facebook’s global business group, who left for Instacart. Facebook also held a massive media agency review for its estimated $1 billion marketing business. On top of that, Apple’s data and privacy changes affected how marketers run campaigns on Facebook; there was a push into shopping and e-commerce on Facebook and Instagram; and a widespread outage led to Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp going dark in October. Then there was Facebook’s biggest change, a rebrand to Meta. Here is a look at Facebook's journey to become Meta in 2021. See all of Ad Age's 2021 Marketers of the Year here. Jan. 6: Facebook takes heat for not doing enough to prevent disinformation, like the “Stop the Steal” movement that helped energize participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. This is a pivotal day for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as they had to contend with what to do about then-President Donald Trump, who used their platforms to communicate with his supporters. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube made the crucial decision to remove posts from the president that day, and ultimately ban him outright. Jan. 11: Facebook hires Roy L. Austin Jr. as a civil rights VP. This is a key position that Facebook promised to fill after civil rights groups organized a brand boycott of the platform in July 2020. The organizations involved in the boycott, like the NAACP and Anti-Defamation League, had warned about the possibility of the type of violence that was seen six months later on Jan. 6. Jan. 25: Ad Age looks into a compelling anti-trust case brewing against Google and Facebook, which had been accused at the end of 2020 of “colluding” to fix ad tech prices. The case touches on the obscure topic of header bidding, a practice well known in ad tech circles that trade in digital ads online. Google and Facebook are accused by states of entering into a deal to stifle innovation in header bidding. Jan. 29: Facebook makes a major course correction that it had been avoiding for years, promising top brands that it would figure out a way to control where ads appear in News Feed. Advertisers had been pressuring the platform for “brand safety” tools, which could prevent their ads from appearing adjacent to the types of posts that could contribute to political polarization and other harmful content. Feb. 1: Facebook prepares for another blow to its business: Apple. The iPhone maker prepares to implement its App Tracking Transparency framework, which will change how all apps collect data on their users. This ignites concerns in the ad industry about how consumers opting out of tracking would impact digital marketing. Facebook rolls out an in-app message encouraging consumers to allow tracking in order to keep ads personalized. Facebook has never said how many users have clicked “allow” when asked, but there are indications that as much as 85% or more of people opt out from tracking on most apps. Feb. 25: Facebook launches a new commercial, the first big marketing push under Chief Marketing Officer Alex Schultz, who joined in 2020. The ad features a voiceover from the legendary Grace Jones, and it extols the virtues of personalized advertising. Facebook is trying to show the public that personalized ads help small business serve consumers’ interests. March 4: Facebook’s News Feed brand safety test takes its first steps recruiting select brands to take part, Ad Age reports. March 11: Ad Age reports on how data lockdowns on Apple and Google platforms will affect advertising on Facebook. The social network will have to build new ways to target ads and measure the effectiveness of campaigns without the same level of insights into how consumers behave on devices and web browsers. March 29: Facebook launches a global media agency review. For the first time in years, the company looks for a new media holdings company to manage its massive marketing budget and strategy. Facebook had been working with WPP and Dentsu. April 22: Facebook’s sibling app Instagram starts testing ads in Reels, which is an important short-form video product for the company. Reels was Facebook’s answer to TikTok, which rapidly became a platform brands were eager to try out. The seemingly carefree style of communication on TikTok also has been viewed more positively than some of the social media behavior displayed on Facebook. May 18: There is an e-commerce craze taking over the major social media apps, including Instagram. Ad Age reports on the phenomenon of social commerce, which is leading to all sorts of products going viral and selling out. The social platforms partly see e-commerce as an answer to data-sharing restrictions online. If an app can serve the ads and make the sales all in one place, the platforms don’t need to follow the consumer anywhere else online. May 26: To take advantage of the social commerce craze, Instagram launches “Drops,” a new place for brands to launch products inside the app. Subscribe to Ad Age now for the latest industry news and analysis. June 9: Carloyn Everson, Facebook’s longtime VP of global business group, announces she will leave the company after a decade of service. Everson’s departure is viewed by advertisers as a troubling sign because she had been a voice of reason during many turbulent moments between Facebook and brands. June 16: Facebook announces a new ad program inside Oculus virtual reality games, a hint that the company has big plans for the “metaverse,” the alternative online world taking shape in games and augmented reality. The announcement about placing ads in games received a mixed response from the notoriously commercial-averse gaming community. One of the launch partners, Resolution Games, pulled out of the ad pilot program after hearing from fans. June 18: It’s approaching one year since the brand boycott of Facebook. In July 2020, more than 1,000 brands had signed up to protest disinformation and hate speech on the platform, a movement that was organized by the NAACP and ADL. Ad Age looks back on how the platform responded to the challenges. One year later many brands ultimately returned to advertising on the platform. June 22: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a livestream audio session, which helped demonstrate one of the company’s new products—audio-based Rooms. Zuckerberg announces new e-commerce features on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, including a way for advertisers to target ads based on consumers’ shopping interests. It's another sign that Facebook sees shopping as a way to make its platform more contained as data-sharing with outside entities tightens. July 6: Brands are starting to get a sense of how Facebook is building its News Feed safety controls. There are still parts that need to be worked out, including a push to get third-party measurement firms, like Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify, to provide independent reporting to brands that the tools work. July 12: Advertisers wonder how working with Facebook will change a month after Everson’s departure. Nicola Mendelsohn steps up to fill Everson’s role in the interim. July 21: Facebook announces a new deal with Media Rating Council, which begins to audit how well the platform administers it content monetization and brand safety policies. July 28: Zuckerberg discusses the “metaverse” during a second-quarter earnings call, hinting at bigger changes to come for Facebook in virtual reality and new online worlds. “It’s a virtual environment,” Zuckerberg said. “We can be present with people in digital spaces.” Zuckerberg also describes the metaverse as a new computing platform, one not controlled by one company, an oblique reference to mobile devices and Facebook’s current riff with Apple over data. Aug. 4: Everson is named president at Instacart, the grocery delivery app and marketing platform. In this role, Everson reunites with Instacart’s new CEO Fidji Simo, who also recently left her former company where she had been head of the Facebook app. Everson stayed with Instacart for a little more than three months, before announcing she would leave that company at the end of the year. Read more: Carolyn Everson leaves Instacart over 'mismatched priorities' Aug. 9: Instagram starts putting ads in the “Shop” tab, which is an e-commerce exploration section of the app. Aug. 12: Mondelēz is one of the first brands to try out Facebook’s News Feed brand safety tools. The controls help brands avoid appearing next to unsuitable posts, but they also raise the price of ads by about 15%, according to Mondelēz marketing leaders. Aug. 18: Facebook releases its first report on the most widely viewed content in News Feed. The company is trying to show the public more information about what is circulating on the platform. Facebook wants to prove it’s not all politics and polarization, but there are questions about whether the report accurately reflects the reality of News Feed content. Aug. 19: Facebook has been giving advertisers more insight into how it will adjust to the online data-sharing shift. Facebook coins a new phrase called “privacy-enhanced advertising.” Facebook is working on these fixes in earnest as there are growing concerns that Apple’s rule changes are affecting ad measurement. Brands are having a harder time tracking “conversion,” which is when an ad on one site leads a consumer to make a purchase or other action on another site. Sept. 1: Facebook announces that it found a glitch in its reporting to brands on the number of conversions their ad campaigns collect on Apple devices. Facebook said it was under-reporting conversions by about 15%, which meant that advertisers were likely having more success with ads than the metrics showed. Sept. 7: Facebook advertisers discuss their troubles with Facebook’s ads platform under the new Apple data regime. “There’s definitely a mismatch between the conversion value reported and the actual conversion value,” one Facebook marketer told Ad Age. Sept. 13: The Wall Street Journal drops its first installment of “The Facebook Files,” based on internal reports that come from an anonymous whistleblower to be named later. Sept. 22: Facebook gives more guidance to advertisers about the conversion troubles, telling them how to adjust their measurement calculations. Sept. 28: Facebook assures advertisers that its quarterly Community Standards Enforcement Report reliably reflects the rate of harmful content on the service. Facebook was responding to questions raised by the recent Wall Street Journal whistleblower reports. The Journal documented an internal Facebook program called XCheck, which exempted millions of high-profile accounts from policies that might have gotten other accounts suspended or banned. Sept. 29: Facebook expands Reels, the TikTok-style videos, into News Feed. Also, Mendelsohn, who is still filling in for Everson as head of global business group at Facebook, sits down with Ad Age Remotely for a live video interview. Oct. 3: “60 Minutes” airs its bombshell interview with the Facebook whistleblower now identified as Frances Haugen, an ex-employee of the company. Haugen outlined her concerns that Facebook puts “profits over people,” after she took thousands of documents from the company. The documents showed some of Facebook’s internal deliberations around topics such as Instagram’s effect on teen health, community safety, election integrity and COVID-19. Oct. 4: Facebook responds to the “60 Minutes” interview, including reaching out to advertisers to explain its position. Also, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp suffer an outage that brings the platforms down for about six hours. The outage becomes fodder for brands to joke on Twitter and revel in the chaos. Oct. 5: Facebook determines the mass outage was caused by a technical disruption in its network traffic, rather than a hack or intentional breach. Oct. 6: After the turmoil caused by the whistleblower and the severe outage, advertisers consider their options. Most advertisers are concerned about the issues at Facebook, but also rely on the platform. Meanwhile, whistleblower Haugen testifies before a Senate subcommittee about the alleged harms of Facebook. Oct. 11: A majority of Facebook users said they would not delete the Facebook app, despite concerns raised by the whistleblower, an Ad Age-Harris Poll survey found. Oct. 13: Facebook global media agency review is coming down to the wire with Dentsu, Havas and Publicis still in the running. But recent Facebook troubles could put the agencies vying for Facebook’s business in a tough spot with employees who are worried about working with the social media giant. Oct. 13: Mendelsohn is officially named Facebook’s global business group leader, taking over the role once filled by Everson. Oct. 20: Facebook is considering a total rebrand of its corporate identity to focus on the metaverse. Advertisers speculate on what that name change could mean and why the company is making this move now. Many see it as a way to deflect from recent public relations struggles. Meanwhile, Facebook’s VP of product marketing Graham Mudd outlines more changes to the ad platform to help advertisers in the wake of Apple’s data changes. Oct. 25: During third-quarter financial reporting, Facebook executives reveal that Apple’s data changes hurt ad revenue. Zuckerberg also mounts a defense of the company during an earnings call with Wall Street analysts, and again discusses the promise of the metaverse. See Ad Age’s 2021 Year in Review here. Oct. 28: Zuckerberg announces that Facebook’s new corporate name is Meta. “[Facebook] is an iconic social media brand but increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything we do,” Zuckerberg said at the Connect VR event. Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp are still the names of those products, but they fall under the corporate umbrella Meta. Oculus Quest devices are renamed Meta Quest devices. Oct. 29: Ad Age dives into how Facebook’s rebrand will change the company and how the marketing world is reacting. Nov. 2: Facebook, now Meta, names Publicis Groupe’s Spark Foundry as its global media agency after a six-month pitch process. Facebook was looking for an agency that could get the best rates on media, and it wanted an agency with precision in programmatic online advertising. On top of that, Meta has a whole new identity to market. Nov. 4: Meta wastes no time marketing its rebrand, releasing its first commercial created by the internal Creative X team and Droga5. Nov. 5: Ad Age explores the inside story of how Meta came to decide on Spark Foundry as its global media agency. Nov. 18: Meta updates the Facebook News Feed brand safety program that marketers like Mondeléz had been testing. Now, the controls will apply to Instagram, too, which had been lacking in the earlier version. Also, Meta promises to tap third-party measurement companies to verify the effectiveness of the program in keeping brands away from harmful content. Meta also faces heat from states attorneys general who start to investigate the claims about how Instagram could harm teens. Nov. 30: A U.K. regulator, worried about competition, squashes Meta’s deal to buy Giphy, a GIF-sharing service. The setback shows that Meta faces increasing regulatory pressure that is affecting its business designs heading into 2022 and beyond. Dec. 8: Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri is in the hot seat in Congress before a Senate consumer protection subcommittee inquiring about how social media harms teens. Some lawmakers call Instagram “addictive.” At the same time, Instagram releases new parental controls to monitor their kids’ activity. In the same week, Facebook also builds more programs that cater to the most active users, known as creators, offering them up to $35,000 a month if they can make popular Reels videos, and other incentives for pursuing fame on social media.

From Facebook to Meta—a 2021 timeline of the social giant's pivotal year

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