Facebook is building paywalls for publishers (FB)

Metered and freemium paywall models will soon be available to publishers on Facebook Instant Articles, Digiday reports — a move that will accommodate many publishers who rely on paid subscriptions as a revenue source. Facebook plans to test the new subscription tools with a batch of publishers at the end of the year, before making them more widely available in 2018.

Publishers are expected to have full control over the pricing of these subscriptions and, importantly, transparency into their subscriber data on Facebook. Certain aspects of the subscription program remain undecided, including how payments will be handled, if Facebook will take a cut of subscription sales, and the extent to which publishers will have access to people’s reading history.

The big question is whether Facebook can make Instant Articles an attractive proposition to publishers. Instant Articles seems to have a lost steam recently after failing to give partnered publishers sufficient monetization. The New York Times, for instance, dropped support for Instant Articles altogether because it found that links directing users back to its website generated greater revenue.

Publishers will also be reluctant to cede further control of their content and readership to Facebook. The viability of Instant Articles subscriptions will hinge on the amount of reader data Facebook shares with publishers, along with the flexibility that publishers are given to operate their metered paywalls. Otherwise, publishers will simply redirect to users to their homepage, rather than Instant Articles.

On a different note, the introduction of subscriptions baked into Facebook for written content could portend subscription video content inside Facebook as well. Populating its platform with video — especially high-quality video sourced from professional publishers and production companies — is one of Facebook’s key initiatives right now. Enabling video producers to add paywalls to their content too seems a likely possibility in the future.

Now a new breed of digital-native publishers — like BuzzFeed, Vox, and Huffington Post — is considering whether to follow suit in a bid to decrease their reliance on the volatile ad market.

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Facebook is building paywalls for publishers (FB)

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