Dive Brief:
- Facebook is offering publishers a helping hand in producing revenue on its platform by allowing branded content on publisher pages, a move that includes its Instant Articles app as well as the live video feature Facebook has been heavily promoting.
- The move might be necessary to placate publishers. A new Digiday report quotes an anonymous spokesperson for a traffic analytics company who pointed out that traffic from Facebook to publishers dropped 20% from January to March.
- More than one publisher corroborated the analytics company's findings, pointing out that the drop in traffic correlates directly with posting content to Instant Articles.
Dive Insight:
Because advertising inventory on Instant Articles is capped for publishers, the ability to earn revenue via the app is limited. Allowing branded content on publisher Facebook pages, and particularly on Instant Articles, might assuage some concerns publishers may have about distributing content via Facebook’s walled garden.
“Is it the answer to Facebook monetization? It’s certainly part of the answer, as long as publishers stay within the rules, they can get creative with how they create value for brands,” one publisher told Digiday, speaking on condition of anonymity. “And it allows, in theory, for us to monetize every video we publish and keep 100% of the revenue.”
Separately, The Information uncovered a data point that might affect marketers heavily invested in Facebook for organic social sharing – original broadcast sharing on Facebook was down 21% by mid-2015 and by 15% year-over-year earlier this year. But, at the same time, its monthly and daily average users continue to steadily rise.