Details of Facebook’s offer are not set yet, but sources told The Wall Street Journal that one of the models being discussed would allow content publishers to keep all the revenue from ads they sell on Facebook-hosted news sites. Because linking to a news site on a mobile device can take several seconds, Facebook’s offer to host the content on its own network should dramatically speed up access to news articles.
The combination of speedier access and a significant boost may not be enough though. According The Wall Street Journal’s sources, publishers included in the first batch of content partners are The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, among others. These content publishers are going to want access to at least some of the data Facebook will be collecting on users of the Instant Articles service.
According the reports, Facebook is willing to give up so much advertising revenue in exchange for keeping users on the site for longer. The longer a user stays, the more ads that can be fed to that user, and the more ads that are viewed, the more ad revenue Facebook piles up.
In June of last year, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University found that Facebook was the most important social media network for news everywhere in the world. Some 35% of respondents to a survey said they got their news from Facebook.
One way or another, Facebook is a news source to be reckoned with.
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