Newsletter #2: Facebook - The end of the (news) affair
Meta's disinterest in news is about to kill off the platform as a source of traffic for football publishers, and perhaps everyone else
Referrer heaven, to referrer hell
It’s been a long, tumultuous, painful decline for publishers, but Facebook looks to be reaching its arranged end game with news, and in some ways it should feel like a relief.
In the football digital publishing space at least, the decline of link-based posts has effectively made referral traffic from the platform an irrelevance. Other niche sports and news in general are still holding up - just - but it seems for football traffic specifically, the game is already over.
How did we get here?
Rewind to 2014, and publishers cracking open the champagne. Facebook likes = Facebook traffic. Your posts weren’t encumbered by intangible issues like reach, or mixing up the content placed on your feed. If you posted a link, your followers saw it, and they clicked, in their millions.
Facebook became the crack cocaine for multiple major publishers, and some new players appeared on the scene (Buzzfeed, for one) putting all of their traffic eggs directly into the Facebook basket. The traffic being generated was unlike anything else seen before, beyond Google and your direct audience.
So, what happened?
Donald Trump, and the 2016 election, happened. Facebook were dragged across hot coals and Mark Zuckerberg in particular was directly in the firing line. His platform was blamed for amplifying misinformation, and ultimately for deciding the fate of the election in Trump’s favour.
Zuckerberg really had no time for this. He had built his platform to in excess of 1 Billion users, mainly from being a prime news source, but he knew his business didn’t make money from appeasing publishers.
No, his money was in advertising, in the users themselves, and in keeping them engaged on the platform. External links to news sites did the opposite; these sent the user away.
He couldn’t just cut off the source that drove his audience, though, that would have been silly. Instead, he introduced countermeasures.
He proposed a ‘switch’ in the content that would be surfaced to a user, in favour of ‘friends and family’ and away from strictly news
He introduced ‘Instant Articles’, a way of viewing written content from publishers that existed entirely on the Facebook platform, and shared ad revenue with the publishers themselves
He introduced a tweak to algorithmic reach, where not all posts were viewed by all followers, but rather they would be surfaced based on ‘trends’ and interest around them.
Zuckerberg in that moment made it clear to publishers that they weren’t welcome on Facebook. But just like crack, it became too tough for publishers to quit on, even though Facebook gave them virtually zero encouragement.
Look at this recent graph produced by Similarweb:
Facebook referrals aren’t quite dead, but they aren’t far off.
Major publishers such as The Sun, The Daily Mail and The Guardian have reported anywhere up to 80% declines in traffic year-on-year - and that’s before you consider the drop-off that came before that.
Some can’t, and may never accept their fate, and like courting the prom queen who never liked them anyway, Facebook now cannot be more implicit in their message to news publishers; it’s not you, it’s us.
What other clear messages are there?
The increased interest in video content ON Facebook to keep the user there, and how brands are rewarded with magical reach by doing so
Instant Articles are gone, altogether
The removal of the ill-fated news tab on the Facebook app in Europe from December 2023
Meta’s Head of News Partnerships, Campbell Brown, is leaving the business, and it’s currently unclear if she will be replaced
The Online Safety Act in Canada has already led to Facebook pulling ALL news from their apps in the territory, flatly refusing to negotiate or agree terms.
Publishers, it’s over. News will eventually disappear and football is proving to be the leading example.
I own football websites in the space and I can say from my experience and from many of the other publishers I talk to that news referrals from Facebook are gone, and they are not coming back.
It’s been nearly a decade coming, but finally, Facebook has put publishers continuing to chase that cocaine high, with diminishing returns, into rehab.
What does it mean for publishers?
If you’re chasing or attempting to grow an audience on Facebook for referral reasons, don’t bother
If you have an existing audience and have the capacity to produce video that can be supported or monetised, assess your options and establish whether it can be a diversified revenue stream
As ALWAYS, diversify your sources of traffic in as many ways as possible - there are still places out there interested in content
Treat this as a cathartic experience - no longer do you need to jump through hoops for a morally dubious organisation that thinks nothing of you anyway.
In the next newsletter, I’ll look at some of the options publishers have to get themselves over Facebook. Let’s face it - we never liked it that much anyway.
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