ARCHIVES: This is legacy content from before Marketing Dive acquired Mobile Marketer in early 2017. Some information, such as publication dates, may not have migrated over. Check out the new Marketing Dive site for the latest marketing news.

Publishers? Facebook reliance could bring relegation to supplier role: report

As publishers rely more on social networks such as Facebook, the danger exists that they will be relegated to suppliers to a one-stop shop, similar to video channels on YouTube, according to a Strategy Analytics report.

Although Facebook?s recently introduced Instant Articles feature lets publishers deliver appealing audio and video presentations and increase interaction with consumers, the roles could flip if the feature were to become a must-read with the traffic generated through Facebook's hosted service an indispensable ad revenue channel. The findings point to the need for publishers to diversify their channels to reach readers, and to carefully consider what to share and how to share on platforms such as Instant Articles. 

?If Instant Articles grows very big, the news publishers would find it as difficult to attract readers back to their own homepages or use their apps, where they have the best visibility to consumer behaviors and therefore best chances for targeted marketing and advertising, as the videos channels have found with their difficulty to attract video viewers away from YouTube to their own video sites,? said Wei Shi, a global wireless practice analyst for Strategy Analytics. 

?This may not matter so long as they can continue to get 100 percent of ad revenues generated through external channels, for example, the current Instant Articles terms. 

?But the terms may change when the roles flip, that is when channels become so strong that publishers rely on them to reach readers, instead of channels relying on publishers for content to attract readers,? Mr. Shi said. 

?At the end of the day, enabling the feature is a cost for social networks, and they may very well come back to demand a share of the revenue.?

Controlling stories
Facebook said it designed Instant Articles to give publishers control over their stories, brand experience and monetization opportunities. Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook?s Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory. 

Publishers also have the ability to track data and traffic through comScore and other analytics tools.

Promoting Instant Articles on Facebook.

Articles featured on Facebook?s Instant Articles service load up to 10 times faster than normal since readers stay on Facebook rather than follow a link to another site.

Interactive features let consumers can zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting a phone. They can watch auto-play videos come alive as they scroll through stories. 

Opportunities to explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions and like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line also are available.

For publishers, the appeal of Instant Articles is the sharing of stories from within Facebook, since the link shared drives others directly to the original source of the story.

When it launched Instant Articles last month, Facebook?s nine partners included The New York Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian and BBC News.

The alliance has raised eyebrows, given that the publishers? participation could ultimately undermine their own businesses. Mark Thompson, president and CEO of The New York Times Company, has said the Times is participating in Instant Articles to explore ways of growing the number of Times users on Facebook, improving their experience of its journalism and deepening its engagement. 

When a Facebook user clicks through on a publisher post within his personal newsfeed, an article enabled for Facebook Instant delivers the news content within the Facebook application. So far the feature is only available in the latest Facebook app on iPhones. 

Personalizing consumption
Publishers have learned that the smaller smartphone screen has to be treated much differently than the screen of a personal computer. They also are grasping that allowing the consumer to select his or her news preferences has to be a priority, resulting in redesigns with improved site speed and performance and features that let consumers create their own personalized mobile newspapers. 

For publishers, ten times faster article uploads.

?Traditional media have experienced for some time that visits to their homepages have dwindled, which has reduced the appeal of homepages to advertisers,? MrShi said. 

?One way of mitigating the trend is to launch apps that a large number of publishers have done. The user experience varies, and most of the time the content in the app is presented in the same way as that on the homepage, without riding on the apps? mobile assets to deliver more appealing user experience.?

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York