Facebook's Advertising Strategy

I can discern over the last three years, three phases of their messaging to potential advertising clients.

2012-13.  Big focus on taking out display ads next to different targets. The emphasis was on competing with Google by having good cost per conversion.

2013-14.  Big focus on improving your company's Facebook page and getting more followers. We were encouraged to advertise our page to get more followers. Now, businesses have lots of followers but only 4% of them see the posts.

2014-forward.  The focus now seems to be on brand building on a mass market scale.  Much like TV, the emphasis in their marketing now seems to be on creating broad brand awareness in the market about the brand and its positioning which is an investment in longer term market development, not a short-term sales generation tool.

I wonder what's next....