Media Briefing: Facebook preps tool comparing publishers’ mobile web revenue to Instant Articles

By Tim Peterson

The Media Briefing this week looks at Facebook’s latest efforts to get publisher and individual writers to post their content directly to its platform.

Facebook’s direct publishing pitch
Media companies’ latest office return plans
3 Questions with Quartz’s Zach Seward
The challenges facing the U.K.’s Black publishers, Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch’s revenue growth plans and more

Facebook’s direct publishing pitch

Facebook is hoping that the uncertainty brewing on one platform will have publishers rushing into the warm embrace of another.

The key hits:

Facebook has built a tool to compare publishers’ mobile web revenue against their potential Instant Articles revenue.
The platform also plans to test a Substack-style newsletter feature for independent creators.
The Google-imposed cookie crisis could push publishers to Facebook’s platform — if Facebook can regain their trust.

Over the past few months, different teams inside Facebook have been busy building tools meant to encourage publishers to publish more using Facebook-native publishing tools such as Instant Articles. It is preparing to launch a tool designed to show publishers how much revenue their mobile web articles might have generated had they been published in the Instant Article format, according to sources at two publishers familiar with an early version of the tool.

To determine the difference, Facebook is running user A/B tests where they prevent a percentage of its user base from seeing any Instant Articles, then monitor their level of engagement with links to publishers’ mobile web content. Facebook is comparing that to a different user cohort’s levels of engagement with publishers’ content that includes Instant Articles formats, confirmed Michael Rucker, a product manager at Facebook responsible for Facebook app monetization.

“Clearly this is meant to boost people’s adoption [of Instant Articles],” said a source at one publication familiar with the tests.

On the other end of the spectrum, Facebook plans to test a Substack-esque newsletter feature, which would allow individual creators to publish newsletters through Facebook and set up private Facebook Groups for newsletter subscribers, Axios reported earlier this week. That feature, which is meant to drive revenue for creators via subscription, is managed by a separate team inside Facebook. Facebook will pay a handful of independent creators to test those tools out.

Facebook’s moves to bolster its own publishing platform come at a moment when many publishers face uncertain ad monetization prospects. As the media industry adapts to life without third party cookies — IAB research released this week estimates that $10 billion worth of publishers’ digital ad revenue depends on them —many publishers could face short-term revenue pressure.

Many publishers found monetizing mobile inventory tough already. Moving more content onto Facebook’s platform, where the RPMs leapt by close to 50% last year, makes sense, especially for publishers that have trouble monetizing their mobile ad inventory directly.

“It’s a walled garden,” that first source said. “But at least you’re not getting screwed by the changes to the other garden.”

At the beginning of 2020, Facebook added a number of features designed to improve monetization through Instant Articles, including a recirculation module that directs readers to more content …read more

Source:: Digiday