Facebook will start publishing the contents of other major publishers this month, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Under its new feature “Instant Articles,” publishers can enhance their article load time for users of Facebook’s mobile app to view their content.
Facebook won’t take ad sales revenue
As per The WSJ, the social networking site has come up with a revenue model that will convince publishers who are concerned about excessive dependence on the social network to share their content. In return, Facebook will gain more of users’ time on the network, and in return will give away all the proceeds from ad sales via Facebook-hosted pages.
Only recently, the social networking site came up with an interesting feature allowing users to better control their News Feeds, and the recent feature will be like an add-on. Generally, Facebook keeps around 30% of revenue earned through ads, but this time, since the company is eying more of users’ time on the platform, it looks to forgo revenue.
Select publishers such as Buzzfeed, The New York Times and National Geographic will publish their articles on the social networking site initially, says the report.
How much control will publishers have?
As of now, there is no clarity about the format of the ads that are expected or if publishers will get a free hand in placing or measuring the ads they sell within Facebook. However, it is obvious Facebook will want publishers using its own advertising technology products such as Atlas and LiveRail rather than tools offered by peers such as Google.
There are publishers looking to exercise control over the user experience and getting their hands on the data of the users accessing their articles. One of the publishers which had discussions with Facebook, told The WSJ that publishers want to exercise greater control over their business.
Previously publishers were unsatisfied with the changes made by Facebook to show users’ items in the News Feed, claiming that the changes resulted in a sharp drop in traffic to their sites from Facebook.
