Facebook has suggested changes to its News Feed will direct its billion-odd users more to "quality" news sites. That's good news for publishers and users. Facebook has stressed that there is no change to its paid content strategy, but digital and media agency seniors in Australia have suggested that as a byproduct, it might mean branded content is pushed down the pecking order.
Branded content and content marketing are taking off. Brands are piling in, publishers are creating their own branded content or native advertising divisions, marketers are increasing their content marketing budgets. Traditional publishers are finding shrinking demand for their platforms.
But Facebook is implementing a subtle shift in emphasis. Facebook posted yesterday that it would increase its focus on “high quality content” within News Feed, basically putting more weight on publisher news rather than, say, memes.
“Why are we doing this?" Facebook's engineering manager Varun Kacholia and Minwen Ji, a software engineer explained the firm's reasons in a post yesterday. "Our surveys show that on average people prefer links to high quality articles about current events, their favorite sports team or shared interests, to the latest meme. Starting soon, we’ll be doing a better job of distinguishing between a high quality article on a website versus a meme photo hosted somewhere other than Facebook when people click on those stories on mobile."
“This means that high quality articles you or others read may show up a bit more prominently in your News Feed, and meme photos may show up a bit less prominently.”
Sounds like a straightforward move to keep users happy and engaged and Facebook stressed that there was no link in the announcement to brands. It means more traffic diverted to traditional publishers too.
But Mike Zeederberg, managing director of digital agency Zuni, said the move might indicate Facebook wishes to extract more revenue from brands which are accessing audiences on Facebook for free through their own branded content.
“Facebook was originally about connecting with people you know,” Zeederberg said. “But then brands got involved, and they were told they had to add value, which they did through interesting branded content. But when this content appears on people's News Feed, the brands are not paying for access to the audience.
“You might find Facebook will start to down-weight branded content on the News Feed while they up-weight content from publishers. This is obviously good news for publishers. It allows Facebook to maintain its audience, because there is still content for audiences to access, but it would mean advertisers would have to pay Facebook for access to that audience.”
MediaCom head of innovation and technology Nic Hodges argued Facebook is “under pressure to generate revenue”. “They may have pushed brands and users too far when they created promoted posts and put ads in the News Feed. I noticed a backlash. So they have taken a step back and asked, how can we still generate revenue through ad products while still creating a better user experience?
“This development is good news for publishers, and if publishers are getting more traffic from Facebook, this is good news for the brands who are buying advertising on publishers' sites.”
Hodges said there is always a “delicate dance” between Facebook and brands around how much visibility Facebook will give to branded content which brands haven't paid for. “Will we see Facebook down-weighting branded content? We'll have to wait and see.”
A Facebook spokesperson said the latest adjustment to its News Feed was "only for organic content", and said it had not made an update to its paid content strategy.
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