Facebook, owner of Facebook but also Instagram and WhatsApp, is pushing hard to get more advertisers on its platform. In last week’s earnings call they made two statements which stood out to me:

“When we think about Instagram, we think we have a great opportunity: 25 million Instagram business profiles, 2 million advertisers, we see both anecdotally and in the data that this is a great place for people to become aware of a product in the first place,” she added.

and then on the “Stories” medium which is on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

We have 400 million people sharing with Instagram Stories, 450 million of people with WhatsApp Status. Facebook is newer, but we’re seeing good progress there. The question is will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed? And we honestly don’t know, we’ll have to see what happens. There are good reasons to be very optimistic about the monetization. The opportunity—full-screen authentic, very engaging, different formats than feed—gives us an opportunity to grow.

Facebook is giving you direct access to people that want to hire you. People that need you to be their celebrant are waiting for you to invest in reaching them on Facebook’s platforms … not through magazines, directories, blogs, expos, or fairs. Direct to them, no middle man.

The age of the middle man is dead.

The middle man still serves value in some areas, for example I even run a small directory that leverages my position in the market. But the investment is small and the return on investment is high.

But when it comes to magazines, there’s not a wedding magazine in the country that is performing well. They’re all struggling, financially, but also in reaching the same people you can reach directly on Facebook.