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Monika Bauerlein, CEO of Mother Jones, has been on the front lines for years watching Facebook revolutionize the media industry.
Bauerlein, who took over nine years ago, remembers the days when some five million users visited Mother Jones’ online page each month after finding articles posted on Facebook. That was in 2017.
But Facebook, now known as Meta, pulled out of the news business, a move that disrupted traffic for many publications (Mother Jones has noticed a 99% drop in Facebook referrals since its heyday) and has had disastrous consequences for some. In September, Meta announced that it would “frown” on its Facebook News Feed tab in European countries, adding the U. K. , France, and Germany, as part of “an ongoing effort to better align our investments with the products and facilities that other people value most. “
The move away from the news follows years of Facebook’s PR mistakes related to the company’s handling of misinformation and its decisions about when to cancel accounts and remove posts. Conservative politicians have long accused the company of operating with a liberal bias, while teams on the other hand have portrayed Facebook as a key tool in Donald Trump’s election in 2016 because of the way Russian operatives exploited it to publicize his candidacy.
“At this point, it’s pretty clear from the feedback from Facebook and Meta executives that they’ve understood that data is more problematic than its value and that they’re only going to show other people a minimal amount of it. Bauerlein said in a statement.
At Mother Jones, a 48-year-old nonprofit magazine specializing in politics and investigations, the implications have been dramatic. Although Facebook generated millions of referrals consistent with Mother Jones month at its peak, in November and December it generated just over 58,000. and 67,000 visitors for Mother Jones, respectively, compared to approximately 172,000 and 228,000 in the same months last year.
An investigation of 1,930 news and media outlets from more than 370 companies conducted through analytics firm Chartbeat for CNBC found that Facebook accounted for 33% of those publishers’ overall social traffic, measured through page views, in December, compared to 50% in the same year. . earlier.
In terms of all external traffic, coming from social networks and search engines such as Google, Facebook accounted for 6% of search engine optimization volume in December 2023, up from 14% in December 2018 and 12% in December 2022. This decline is basically because of Facebook, as Google accounted for 38% of external traffic in December, up from 26% five years earlier and 36% in 2022.
Jill Nicholson, chief marketing officer at Chartbeat, said Facebook’s social traffic decline stems from several moves at Meta, including banning Canadian users last year from sharing news on its apps after Canada’s federal government passed the Online News Act, which forced tech companies to pay content fees to domestic media outlets.
Nicholson said a similar ban imposed through Meta in Australia in 2021 ended up “making data less accessible” overall. Facebook reversed this resolution after reaching an agreement with the Australian government.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shows little interest in addressing the hot-button topics of politics and global affairs after taking trips to the Capitol after the 2016 election. Since converting his company’s call to Meta in late 2021, Zuckerberg has focused on making an investment. billions of dollars per quarter to expand the futuristic metaverse as it seeks to fend off TikTok by bolstering Reels, Meta’s short-form video product used by creators.
Meta shares closed at an all-time high on Friday, continuing a nearly 200% rally last year.
David Carr, senior head of analytics at analytics firm Similarweb, said Meta’s news-turning technique doesn’t just depend on Zuckerberg’s preferences. Users are also tired of all the online disputes.
“One of the things that Facebook has talked about as justification or explanation for why they’re making safe adjustments is that other people are happier with the service when they don’t see all that political stuff,” Carr said.
A Meta spokesperson, echoing previous statements by corporate executives, said the drop in news is due to user behavior.
“We know that other people don’t come to Facebook for news and political content, but to engage with other people and notice new opportunities, passions and interests,” the spokesperson said. “We’ve made several adjustments to better align our investments with the products that other people value more. “
In de-emphasizing news, Meta hasn’t just minimized contentious political debates. It’s made it harder for publications of all types and sizes to circulate stories to Facebook’s 3 billion monthly users.
Data from Similarweb shows that the 100 most sensible global news publishers saw Facebook’s search engine optimization traffic fall in 2023 compared to 2022, after a steady decline for several years.
Facebook accounted for 2. 7% of the Daily Mail’s global search engine optimization traffic in November 2023, up from 6. 5% in November 2020 and 3. 8% in November 2022, according to Similarweb. For The Independent, Facebook’s contribution fell to 1. 3% of traffic in November. up from 6. 5% three years ago and 4% in 2022.
Posts had to adapt and find other tactics to drive traffic. For some advertising sites that needed Facebook’s big numbers to make money, existential replacement.
BuzzFeed, once known for its viral posts and videos, shut down its BuzzFeed News site in April. The company still owns the HuffPost news site, but its main site largely comprises entertainment content, quizzes, and videos.
The company has a market capitalization of less than $35 million, nine years after NBCUniversal, owned by CNBC’s parent company Comcast, invested at a valuation of $1. 5 billion. BuzzFeed’s estimated Facebook search engine optimization traffic was 12% in November 2023, up from 15%. % a year earlier, according to Similarweb.
Vice Media, valued at $5. 7 billion in 2017, filed in May.
Some mainstream media brands have noticed a bigger drop in traffic on Facebook in recent years, as they have identified over time a desire to diversify their distribution sources. Across the media industry, news outlets are moving away from Facebook.
Sam Cholke, head of expansion and distribution at the Institute for Nonprofit News, cited the Texas Tribune and the Montana Free Press as examples of publications that are taking other routes to locate readers. The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit online newspaper launched in 2009, seizes people-opportunities to attract readers, while the Montana Free Press, introduced in 2016 through journalist John S. Adams, puts up billboards in the capital, Helena.
BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti told analysts on his company’s earnings conference call in August that he was “laser-focused” on a new strategy that involves using synthetic intelligence to help generate content in addition to relying more on creators.
“As Facebook and other large tech platforms continue to prioritize vertical video, traffic references from those platforms to our content have decreased,” Peretti said on the call.
Jessica Probus, an editor at BuzzFeed, told CNBC in an interview that BuzzFeed’s “biggest shift” in its audience strategy and Facebook came around 2021. Although there was a “slow decline over a long period of time,” the main “tipping point,” she said. The matrix happened when Meta started talking more directly to TikTok.
BuzzFeed wanted to “put even more emphasis on our own properties,” which included its main app and online page, as well as others like HuffPost and Tasty.
BuzzFeed offers other money-making tactics, including promoting sponsorships, subscriptions and memberships, as well as commercial activities “monetized through transactions, things that other people buy through our site,” Probus said.
Because Mother Jones is a nonprofit and relies on its donors and fans more than advertising, Bauerlein said the publication weathered the social media typhoon better than others.
“Facebook traffic has never paid for our journalism, for most of our journalism,” Bauerlein said. Regarding the search for traffic by new media, Bauerlein said that “a lot of capital has been spent in the process. “
Bauerlein said Mother Jones still managed to get more fans on Facebook than ever before, which she says is a testament to customers’ appetite for their stories, though they’re harder to find.
“Now you just don’t see the data that you chose to see,” Bauerlein said. It’s “a genuinely broken promise to users, especially at a time when global is incredibly confusing and incredibly difficult to understand. “
Cholke said when it comes to Facebook and news, writing has been on the wall for years. Over the past decade, many publishers have noticed that their “social media traffic declined dramatically,” and Facebook trimmed the precedence of text-based articles. In 2019, Facebook paid $40 million to advertisers who alleged in a lawsuit that the company inflated their video stats, resulting in more expensive video ads.
“For a lot of people, myself included, it’s one of the first signs that we want to be cautious about it,” Cholke said.
The more than 400 North American media outlets associated with the Institute for Nonprofit News are struggling to find tactics to succeed with their readers, Cholke said. Some publishers are doubling down on their search traffic on Google, a strategy that comes with other risks.
Last year, for example, a bug in Google Discover, a news and content service, led to a drop in traffic for several publishers.
In addition to the tweaks that have occurred at Facebook, this begs the question, “What are the options?”Cholke said.
Chartbeat’s Nicholson said one of the sites used is YouTube, where “some are starting to monetize social video. “But for the most part, he says, publications want to rely more on “their own operated platforms,” where traffic patterns are less volatile. .
“When those trends started to decline on social media in terms of referral sources, that’s when other people decided to branch out, investing more in newsletters and apps,” Nicholson said.
Mathew Ingram, a longtime media columnist and editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, said Facebook was “never a smart place” for news because it “focused on emotions and sharing for other purposes” besides seeking the truth.
This is true even when Facebook focused on news. But when the platform started spreading the information, the economy stopped working.
“To keep your traffic and all your numbers where they were, just search three times as hard and eventually waste all that time and resources to get a diminishing return,” Ingram said.
Data from the Pew Research Center indicates that TikTok is taking market share when it comes to where consumers get their information.
In a study published in November, Pew found that the percentage of U. S. adults who say they turn to TikTok for data has more than quadrupled since 2020, from 3% to 14%. Elisa Shearer, a senior researcher at Pew, told CNBC that during that period, the share of Facebook users who reported receiving data on the site fell from 54% to 43%.
But the way other people access news on TikTok is different. Instead of seeing links to articles from outside publications, information tends to be spread through influencers in the form of short videos. This makes it a particularly low source of traffic for media outlets.
Still, Bauerlein said Mother Jones is building a bigger presence on TikTok as well as Instagram because the publication wants to find consumers where they are and “serve people who are looking for trustworthy information,” she said.
“If we all finish localizing news in the metaverse, then we’ll localize Mother Jones in the metaverse,” he said. What Mother Jones probably wouldn’t do, she says, is “bet everything on one platform, because it never works. “
Disclosure: NBCUniversal, owned by Comcast, is the parent company of CNBC.
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