Is Facebook Watch really the answer to monetising video content?
Today Facebook launches its video on demand platform, Watch. With all the positive rhetoric surrounding the move, Zoe Samios asks, is it really for the benefit of publishers?
The relationship between Facebook and publishers has not been easy. Over the years, small and large publishers alike have spoken about the struggles with over-reliance on the platform, disdain at a de-prioritisation of content in the news feed, and a pivot away from the off-platform tech giant.
They’ve also lamented the failure of Instant Articles, with some describing the return as ‘woeful’.
However, slowly, Facebook began to turn on the charm. Why? Because as much as it doesn’t like to admit it, it’s dependent on publishers to build its ecosystem.
The ‘publishers’ in this context have been perpetually treated by Facebook as advertisers who need to pay to reach not only new audiences, but their very own audience that are interested in their brand. As such they should treat Facebook as an advertising platform, nothing more and nothing less. Publishers should see through Facebook cosying up to them for what it is: further expansion into Youtube / free to air tv ad revenue and an attempt to placate the negative perception that they have been harmful to journalism, the media and businesses that make truly creative content – useful stuff to say in front of Government inquiries.
The only publishers Facebook actually cares anything about are the platform’s users, the billion-odd unpaid free content providers who also provide Facebook with the personal data and preferences that Facebook makes money from.
If I were a ‘publisher’ I’d treat this olive branch as poison ivy, and instead concentrate on building a better product that people want to visit in their own rite and work out how to monetize it, whether that’s through a paywall or a better advertising model. Why on earth a business would invest in another business that has undermined their own existence and continues to do so is beyond me. It’s like offering your own body up as the host for an alien to impregnate in the Aliens movies. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t end well for the host.