Facebook leans on commerce and creators as usage keeps sliding
Meta reshapes its flagship app around Marketplace, Shops and creator video to offset declining engagement in key markets.
Mariano De Vitto · September 2026
Facebook, the app that built Meta's advertising empire, is confronting a hard truth: fewer people are opening it as often as they used to in several key markets. According to eMarketer, the company's response is to lean harder into commerce and creator content, reshaping the flagship feed around Marketplace, Shops and creator-driven video rather than the link-sharing and status-update format that defined its first decade and a half.
This isn't a small tweak. Facebook was for years the anchor of Meta's ad business, the place where broad reach and detailed targeting made it the default buy for brand campaigns big and small. But daily usage patterns have been shifting toward Instagram and TikTok-style short-form feeds, forcing Meta to find new reasons for people, and advertisers, to keep showing up on Facebook itself.
Commerce becomes the anchor
eMarketer's reporting highlights Meta pushing deeper commerce integrations into Facebook, including in-app checkout and catalog-driven ads. These features turn the feed into more of a storefront than a bulletin board, letting users discover and buy products without leaving the app. Marketplace and Shops, already familiar to many users, are being positioned as core engagement drivers rather than side features, a strategy meant to give people a functional reason to return to Facebook even if they're spending less time there.
Creators fill the engagement gap
Alongside commerce, Meta is expanding creator partnerships on Facebook that echo the influencer economy already thriving on Instagram and TikTok. This matters because creator content tends to generate the kind of organic engagement that traditional brand posts increasingly struggle to achieve. By importing that playbook to Facebook, Meta is betting that creator-driven video can offset the erosion in casual, everyday usage that used to be Facebook's core strength.
For marketers, the implications go beyond Facebook alone. The platform's feed is no longer just a venue for static brand awareness campaigns, it's an active participant in Meta's broader push toward shoppable content. Brands that have historically treated Facebook as a reliable reach channel, running the same static creative and link ads that worked years ago, now need to reconsider that approach as Meta reweights the platform toward commerce and creator collaboration.
Rethinking budget allocation across Meta
This shift also has direct consequences for how budgets get split across Meta's family of apps. If Facebook is deliberately prioritizing commerce and creators to compensate for softer usage, campaigns built solely around traditional link ads or static creative risk underperforming relative to formats that lean into shopping and creator content. Marketers running cross-platform strategies spanning Instagram, Facebook and increasingly TikTok need to test where creator content and shoppable formats actually drive results, rather than assuming Facebook's role in the funnel is unchanged from prior years.
The broader takeaway is that Facebook's identity within the Meta ecosystem is evolving in real time. With usage sliding in key markets, marketing teams should treat the platform less as a guaranteed reach engine and more as a commerce and creator channel competing for attention alongside Instagram, TikTok and other platforms. That means testing shoppable formats, allocating budget toward creator partnerships and revisiting how Facebook fits into the broader media mix rather than defaulting to legacy assumptions about its role.
The Signal Brief · Mariano De Vitto — Head of Marketing, Barcelona