When the social network discontinued its News App “Paper” soon after, transmogrifying it into a group of fast-loading News Feed stories called Instant Articles, CNN remained on board. And last year, when Facebook began concentrating on hosting live video, CNN was one of the few parties to which it paid a low fee to produce clips of, say, election results being projected on the Empire State Building.
But the balance is showing in the relationship. Facebook’s latest pitch to publishers such as CNN is for them to produce a regular stream of TV-quality, edited, original videos that will give Mark Zuckerberg’s company a possibility to compete with YouTube to siphon some of the $70 billion pouring into TV ads each year. In exchange, the publishers can receive some of the revenue for ads that roll in the middle of the videos. Facebook will manage all the ad sales.
It’s getting tougher for CNN and others to view these classifications as mutually beneficial. “Facebook is about Facebook,” says Andrew Morse, general manager of CNN’s digital operations. “For them, these are practices, but for the media companies looking to partner with significant commitments, it gets to be a bit of whiplash,” Morse says the financial benefit Facebook offers isn’t enough to convince him that running directly with the social network will be worthwhile in the long term.
On June 8, Facebook announced it would allow journalists to put more ads in Instant Articles and said it’s been paying $1 million in total ad revenue daily to the companies using the service. Ben Lerer, CEO of online video machine Group Nine Media (Thrillist, NowThis News, the Dodo), says that while he’s not satisfied by his deals with Facebook, he’s optimistic they’ll improve.
Jason Kint, chief executive officer of the industry trade group Digital Content Next, was blunter. “Media companies are like serfs working Facebook’s land,” he says.
For the past few years, it’s been obvious for the company to find news organizations eager to test its latest ideas. The companies rely heavily on Facebook to boost their audiences, especially on mobile devices. Outlets have begun to pull back from Facebook partnerships, however, concerned that they’re putting more into the deals than they’re getting out of them.
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