Four months on: How Facebook’s algorithm change has affected publishers
In January this year, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the tech giant would return its focus to family and friends, resulting in a deprioritization for publishers. Four months on, Mumbrella’s Zoe Samios assesses the impact locally.
On Tuesday evening, I took a scroll through Facebook, interested to see how founder Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement from January might have implicated my own feed.
The quick 30-second scroll was telling. Almost every piece of content was from a friend, be it an image or a status. Sure, there were media companies ‘in the feed’, but they were advertisements and sponsored posts.
Facebook’s algorithm change is visible from the consumer perspective, but how are publishers faring?
I gave up even looking at ‘Reach’ on FB a long time ago – I think it is as irrelevant as it is unreliable. The only measures that matter to me (and my advertisers – and they only matter to me because they matter to my advertisers) are ‘unique visitors per month’ and ‘total page views’ on my own web site. And, for me, both those measures are up around 40% for the first four months of this year compared to the same four months last year – and Facebook remains my number one source of referrals (even though I HATE relying on it).
Great article Zoe
Great work Zoe and cheers to the publishers for sharing their experiences and data. Very insightful. Hopefully the renewed focus on loyalty & engagement is rewarded with premium ad-rates.
Is it just me or is anyone else wondering when we are going to talk about Facebook’s ‘advertising viewability’…are they are held to account on this metric by agencies, like everyone else is? Whilst we’re trying to level the playing field…
I suspect your think that ‘unique visitors’ are Aussies like you an me. Boy are you in for a surprise.
P.S. Halve your page length and put in a Next=> button and you can double your page views. Pft to a lousy +40%.