When it comes to the mainstream media, what Facebook wants is usually what Facebook gets, if only because it commands the attention of more than 1.5 billion people. And what the giant social network has wanted for some time now is video — lots of it, preferably the live kind, in order to help promote its Facebook Live video feature.
At one point last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook was paying a number of mainstream media outlets (including the New York Times and BuzzFeed) a total of about $50 million to get them to create and upload video. Video also seemed to be promoted more in users’ feeds as well, and so many publishers started beefing up their video teams and spending more on creating video.
Now, it seems as though that gravy train may be ending, at least for media companies who were hoping to cash in with viral short clips. Facebook is said to be ending its payment program, according to a recent report at Recode, and is now moving its focus more towards promoting Facebook Live use by individuals.
Note: This was originally published at Fortune, where I worked from 2015 to 2017
Although there has been no confirmation that the program is coming to an end, the idea that Facebook’s open-checkbook approach to video produced by media organizations might eventually run out isn’t surprising. The promotional value of that video has probably had its effect.
But what could be more interesting for media companies and publishers is if Facebook decides to push longer, more programmed formats — similar to the type of thing Netflix creates, or what Apple is said to be working on for original video: short-form, TV-style content. The problem for all those news outlets who staffed up for video is that this kind of content is difficult and expensive to produce.
As if that wasn’t enough, Facebook has repeatedly had to revise its numbers for things like engagement on video, after errors in the tracking of those statistics.
The bigger picture from a media perspective is that this latest shift is another in a series of goalpost-moving decisions by the social network. As news companies scramble to try and generate revenue to make up for declines in traditional print and web advertising, they are coming to rely more and more on Facebook. And that’s hard to do when the terms of the deal keep changing.
Just when publishers get used to producing one kind of content in order to gain the favor of Facebook’s news-feed algorithm, the company tweaks its code and media companies see their traffic disappear almost overnight.
Some companies have re-oriented themselves towards video in a significant way over the past year, in part because of Facebook’s focus on it and demand for more, and not just the New York Times or BuzzFeed. Mashable got rid of its entire news team last year so that it could devote all its resources to producing video. What happens now?
Obviously there are other ways to monetize video, but Facebook was one of the largest and the most demanding. And each time Facebook changes what it is looking for, media companies become that much more nervous about putting their content eggs into that giant basket — as perhaps they should be.