Facebook thinks it's found the way to get people to watch Watch - and it's betting big on news
- Facebook is rolling out a new dedicated hub within Watch specifically for news publishers.
- It's an interesting play for Facebook, which has recently veered away from news. But it's also seeking to create habitual viewing of Watch - and news may fit the bill.
- And despite concerns over Facebook dropping funding, publishers feel that the social network is serious about its ambitious for quality journalism.
- CNN, Mic, Univision and Attn: are among the first publishers to make dedicated news shows for Watch.
Facebook wants to get people to actually watch Watch.
So the company is turning to a crop of media companies that it's recently had a rocky relationship with for help: news organizations.
After months of speculation, Facebook is formally rolling out a dedicated news tab within its Watch video section featuring shows created by a handful of top media companies like CNN, Fox News, ABC News and Univision.
It's an interesting play for Facebook, which has spent the past year trying to get its millions of users to deliberately visit Watch, its dedicated web video hub. Watch got off to something of a shaky start last year, as it focused on short form entertainment series that were all over the map in terms of quality.
Enter traditional news organizations, which have experience in drawing habitual audiences.
Facebook's embrace of hard news is somewhat ironic, given recent events
Publishers' relationships with Facebook have been up and down for years. Things has been particularly fraught for the past year, after the social network announced a tweak to its algorithm that prioritized content from users' friends and family members over posts from publishers and brands.
That move, coupled with Facebook's early entertainment-focus on Watch, seemed to send a clear message to the market that Facebook didn't want anything to do with news.
Not to mention that prior to the algorithm tweaks, Facebook has more than once shifted gears on its content strategies. In 2016, for example, Facebook started paying a group of top media companies to produce video for Facebook Live, which for the most part petered out.
But Facebook's been trying to mend fences with news, since Watch needs all the help it can get
Over the past six months, Campbell Brown, head of global partnerships at Facebook, and her team have worked to smooth over some publisher frustrations by "giving a boost to quality news" in newsfeeds, she told Business Insider.
The culmination of that work is a slate of seven shows created for Facebook Watch that are also paid for by Facebook. The shows range from quick daily programs to weekly shows that profile conspiracy and fraud happening in Alabama.
The seven publishers initially creating Facebook-exclusive shows are: CNN, Mic, Univision, Fox News, Attn:, Alabama Media Group and ABC News.
By the end of the summer, news shows will roll out from more than a dozen publishers, some of which will feature big TV names. CNN, for example, is bringing TV personality Anderson Cooper to Facebook with a show called "Anderson Cooper Full Circle" that is shot vertically to be viewed on mobile devices.
According to Brown, ABC News is providing a livestream so that breaking news can quickly be piped onto Facebook.
"These partners are not just cutting up TV shows and putting it on Facebook," Brown said. "These are all partners who are already doing quality news video on Facebook and know how to engage their audience."
Compared to videos that appear in the newsfeed-which gets millions of eyes-users will have to navigate to the Watch section to find these shows. That means that Watch series could get fewer views than the stream of content pumped out for Pages, which appears in newsfeeds.
Plus, news is not exactly hard to find on the web. And clips from anchors like CNN's Cooper are somewhat ubiquitous.
However, Brown said that Watch is designed to appeal to a loyal group of "intentional" viewers who want real-time content. "It's important to have a destination to go during big breaking news moments," Brown said.
Publishers have been through this before with Facebook
This isn't the first time that Facebook has courted publishers with Watch. Last August, Facebook funded a variety of entertainment-focused programs from media companies like Tastemade, Major League Baseball, National Geographic and A+E Networks. Similar to that program, publishers can run ad breaks during their programs and split revenue with Facebook.
After those 12-month deals ended, Facebook chose to not renew many of the shows, leaving some publishers cautious about going all in on the new version of Watch.
Mic's publisher Cory Haik acknowledged that Facebook's "algorithm is a hard thing to figure out." But after testing a news-geared program called "For the Record" that's hosted by senior writer and correspondent Jack Smith IV this spring, "the performance there felt quite healthy," she said. She added that "we're feeling pretty good that there will be mechanisms there" to succeed with a new show called "Mic Dispatch." The show airs twice a week and profiles "individuals whose stories reveal the human picture that lies beyond the headlines."
Attn: is another publisher that was involved in the first batch of Watch shows. Cofounder Jarrett Moreno said the company was approached a couple of months ago by Facebook and asked to create a different type of news program from a daily recap. The publisher will create weekly shows that are three to five-minutes-long aimed at "creating entertaining content around what's happening in the world."
"We've had a lot of success with Watch shows and quality content performs well in the newsfeed," Moreno said.
New engagement models
Publishers like CNN are also experimenting with new tools to make programs more interactive. According to Brown, CNN's show will include polls that appear at the bottom of the screen that lets viewers answer questions throughout the program.
"It was important that Facebook understands that premium and top-tier content has value," said Andrew Morse, EVP and general manager at CNN Digital Worldwide. He added that Cooper will promote the Facebook show on his TV program but that "discoverability [of the content] should be baked" into Facebook.
While CNN is programming the content exclusively for Facebook, 50% its mobile and desktop traffic comes directly to the site, meaning that it's relied less on platforms for distribution than other publishers. "Some newer entities built their entire publishing strategy around Facebook distribution," Morse said.