In some ways, Facebook’s new ad campaign seems to run counter to what people are actually using the app for in 2025. Yet, at the same time, it also highlights the key connective benefit of the app, which is likely what keeps many people checking in with their Facebook feed every day.
Because you’re not logging in to “imagine” yourself in some AI-generated image, or to check out the latest video. You’re opening up the Facebook app to check and see if any of your connections has shared anything of note.
Which this ad does well to showcase.
Called “A Little Connection Goes a Long Way,” Facebook’s first ad campaign in four years aims to highlight the value of connection in the lead-up to the holiday season.
It’s an engaging reminder of the power of Facebook to bring people together, even if, as noted, that’s not really what people are using the app for these days.
Indeed, Meta’s own data shows that Reels consumption is now the driving force behind Facebook usage, and the only thing that’s generating engagement growth.
Last year, Meta reported that Reels viewing accounts for 60% of all user time spent on Facebook, while Meta also reported in its Q2 performance update (in August this year) that time spent on video content has grown by more than 20% year-over-year.
Which suggests that the vast majority of cumulative time that people spend in the app is now dedicated to watching Reels clips, relegating the connective benefits that are highlighted in this campaign to the outer.
But then again, why do you check in on Facebook every day?
Here’s the thing: What I suspect (but can’t definitively prove without internal data) is that Facebook usage has declined significantly, in terms of cumulative time spent, though everybody still checks into their Facebook feed every day, just to see if any of their friends of family, or even past classmates, have shared anything of interest.
Facebook is now a valuable online organizer for birthdays and celebrations, which is why Facebook’s active user count remains so high. But I also don’t think that the majority of people are spending a heap of time on the app, with Instagram, YouTube and TikTok likely taking up way more of our cumulative attention.
But again, we only have some measures to indicate this.
Back in the day, as part of its regular performance reporting, Facebook used to share updates on the amount of time that users were spending in its apps, reporting, for example, in 2016 that users were spending more than 50 minutes per day, on average, using Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
But that was the last update of this element, with Meta instead now only reporting overall active users. Which is a very different measure, but again, Facebook’s active user count is massive (over 3 billion users), and it looks much better for Meta to report that its usage remains high, than to share that actual time spent in its apps has declined.
Though it has also confirmed this as well, albeit in a different format.
Earlier in the year, as part of Meta’s court battle against the FTC, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that the amount of time that people spend on both Facebook and Instagram had “gone down meaningfully,” with more conversations shifting to messaging instead.
Friend sharing, in particular, has declined, as shown in this slide from Meta’s courtroom presentation:
As you can see in these graphs, the time that people spend in the app engaging with content posted by friends declined from 22% in 2023, to 17% in 2025.
And 22% was already a minor amount of what’s still technically considered a “social” media app, with the vast majority of the rest going to video content.
Meta hasn’t shared an updated count of average minutes spent per user in the app, but again, you can assume that it’s now significantly less than 50 minutes per user per day. Which underlines the idea that most users are likely only checking in to see what friends and family have posted, then bouncing off to other apps.
Does that make Facebook less valuable? Well, it depends on how you define value. If broad reach is your goal, then Facebook remains the place to be, but if the assumption is that people are spending time scrolling through their News Feed, I would suggest that’s probably not the case.
It’s also interesting that Meta’s highlighting its connective benefits while also trying to get you to engage with its content regurgitating AI tools ate every turn, which have absolutely nothing to do with human connection.
In any event, the interesting thing about this campaign is that Facebook is trying to play up its connective capacity, which it knows is not a major part of the app. But it is still a key connective tool, and the ad does play into this, and could help to drive more interest as a result.
Basically, this is a long-winded way of saying that this is a good ad, even if it doesn’t directly align with how you might be using Facebook day-to-day. And it could well get more people checking in on the holidays for catch ups with old friends.
