How a story goes from blog post to coverage
On Wednesday, Facebook published a blog post that said “Today we’re beginning to roll out a tool for publishers using Instant Articles to measure how their articles perform compared to the mobile web equivalents.”
Yesterday, in a separate blog post, the company also confirmed that it’s offering a subscription service for publishers. This alone has generated many pieces of content in the last couple of weeks.
Many companies, especially in Silicon Valley, take to their own sites to announce these things, where in the past, the only option they’d have is to pay a press release service to disseminate their announcement.
And when Facebook writes a blog post about how it will affect publishers, it’s like catnip for media reporters.
Here’s how 700 words from two Facebook blog posts turns into coverage across media — which sites aggregate the original post, which ones do additional reporting, and a look at the sources each outlet uses. (Kudos to Slate, The Atlantic and Daily Mail’s PR teams getting their execs press in at least three stories!)
New York Times: (sources: none)
Techcrunch: (Sources: none)
AdWeek: (Sources: none)
AdAge: (Sources: anonymous, trade group Digital Content Next)
“Instant Articles are highly trafficked and users prefer the format,” said one publishing exec from a company that soured on the Instant Articles program. “The problem is the monetization has been inadequate.”
…..
“It’s good if Facebook is actually helping to forge direct relationships between their audience and the news brand,” said Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next, a publishing trade group.
“It may be antithetical to how Facebook operated its business historically,” Kint said. “But it creates more incentive to get publishers comfortable putting all their content inside Facebook’s closed platform.”
The Wall Street Journal (sources: The Atlantic, The Daily Mail): “Kim Lau, vice president of digital and head of business development at the Atlantic, which posts almost all its stories on Facebook using Instant Articles, said the move wasn’t necessarily a game changer, but was a positive sign Facebook was trying to better accommodate publishers.
“It helps us understand the trade-offs we are making and to better understand what the benefits are,” she said. “We have been asking for this from the beginning.”
……
“Others, such as the Daily Mail, which posts almost all of its content on Facebook via Instant Articles, say there have been clear benefits, including drawing in more readers.
“It’s true that the CPMs have been a little lighter there than on our own mobile webpage, but we have seen close to 50% uplift, so if you do the math you can see that added volume outweighs whatever little bit we may lose on CPM,” said Noah Szubski, the Mail’s chief product officer.”
Digiday (sources: Slate, Wired, Daily Mail, The Atlantic, Little Things): “For Wired, which has used Instant Articles since it launched, it’ll help inform Wired’s social strategy, too, said Jason Tanz, Wired’s site director.
….
“You get to figure out what that little lightning bolt is worth,” said Dan Check, vice chairman of Slate, which is using the tool to evaluate its decision to publish most, if not all, its Facebook articles as Instant Articles. “This informs the conversation.”
“DailyMail.com has published everything as Instant Articles from the start, and the tool validates that decision, and Noah Szubski, chief product officer there. “We know that with the uplift, we’re doing better” in terms of monetization, he said.
“Another publisher, LittleThings, already knows how each piece of its content reaches people and monetizes on Instant Articles versus the mobile version, thanks to its in-house analytics. Based on that, it only publishes as much as one-fourth of its content through Instant Articles, usually longer articles that have more monetization capabilities, said Gretchen Tibbits, president and COO. Facebook would have to do much better in terms of monetization for LittleThings to change tack.
….
“Kimberly Lau, svp and head of business development at The Atlantic, said she’d like to see more data, but is glad Facebook released what it did.
“It’s an important step in this process, and we’re excited about it because it’s a show of good faith that they’re making it public,” she said.
Poynter (Sources: Slate, Daily Mail, The Atlantic):
“Facebook has given us what we need to make the apples-to-apples comparison between Instant Articles and our other monetization channels,” said Dan Check, vice chairman of The Slate Group, in an email to Poynter.
“It’s easy to take this uplift percentage and calculate overall Instant Article revenue versus what you would have made if the content was mobile web,” said Noah Szubski, chief product officer at DailyMail.com, in an email to Poynter.
“I’ve always believed that the user experience of Instant Articles was positively correlated with more consumption. With the launch of this metric, I can finally back up that belief with real data,” said Kim Lau, The Atlantic’s senior vice president of digital and head of business development, in an email to Poynter. “For the past 30 days, we’re seeing a 33.5 percent increase in article views compared to our mobile web versions.”
In short, we all eat at the same trough.
