Video Briefing: Rising costs on Facebook force publishers to rethink branded video distribution
With ad costs going up on Facebook, publishers have been rethinking their branded content distribution strategies and, in some cases, looking for alternative sources of distribution.
The key hits:
- Costs for paid video distribution on Facebook has more than doubled year over year, stemming from Facebook’s decision to prioritize user posts as well as more buyers in Facebook’s marketplace.
- This has been tough for publishers as Facebook has largely been “the only game in town” when it came to buying reach in a quick and efficient manner.
- Rising costs naturally mean lower margins for publishers, which have pivoted to other options including: sponsorships on existing editorial; owned marketing channels such as websites and email; and other platforms such as Instagram.
- Show sponsorships can be attractive to advertisers as these programs come with promised organic reach.
- But not every publisher has massive scale on editorial programming across platforms, which is hurting their branded video efforts.
- Other platforms, especially Instagram, are short-term opportunities before they, too, push prices up.
Costs for paid video distribution on Facebook have more than doubled year over year, according to executives at three different publishers with sizable reach on the platform. For one publisher, which does more than a billion video views per month across platforms, the cost-per-click for Facebook video ads was 50 cents in February, more than doubling from 23 cents a year ago, according to an executive at the company.
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