Truth #1: Facebook Is Not Your Friend.
While some publishers have seen Facebook success, the relationship between the platforms and the content creators that sustain them could hardly be called a friendship. After all, Facebook has made it clear that they prioritize friends in the News Feed; they don't extend the same courtesy to publishers.
Historically Facebook has delivered significant traffic, but the boundless reach Facebook once offered is long gone. Some publishers have altered their strategy to game Facebook's rules, tailoring their content to what they think the algorithm wants, but with mixed results.
Chasing platform traffic isn't viable in the long term when it leads publishers to commit to a strategy likely to be rendered irrelevant by the next Facebook algorithm tweak. Publishers are left with large "audiences" they can't directly reach, while being in an industry increasingly reliant on meaningful audience engagement. The reality is that Facebook has become a pay-to-play game. For publishers to establish direct relationships with their audience, they must focus on direct channels-like email-and not rely solely on the platform.
To be sure, Facebook has made some concessions to publishers, and 2018 will bring more. Still, no matter how Facebook tries to placate the publishing industry, it doesn't change the fact that Facebook competes for the same ad revenue as publishers, and in a game that Facebook controls. And control they do: Google and Facebook command 61% of global online advertising spend. That speaks to another pressing issue facing publishers.
Truth #2: Ad Revenue Won't Be Enough to Sustain Quality Publishers.
In recent years, much of digital publishing strategy has focused on propping up the ad-driven business model, but the problems facing the industry go beyond finding new ways to drive ad revenue. The problem is with the ad-driven business model itself.
With two platforms absorbing a growing majority of ad spend, publishers with an ad-driven business model must fight for a diminishing pool of dollars. At best, publishers have found short-term solutions to increase ad revenue, such as boosting yield with header bidding. At worst, chasing ad revenue has led to the much-maligned "pivot to video".
When the ad dollar pie simply isn't big enough for everyone to get a slice, publishers should look beyond a reliance on ads and diversify their revenue. Many publishers are doing so with ecommerce, events, and lead generation. This will continue in 2018 as the major platforms take the lion's share of ad revenue.
The past year also saw many publishers combat declining ad revenue by monetizing their audience directly with a paywall. Still, if publishers want to drive revenue from their audience, they must build strong relationships with that audience first. Connecting with them outside of the platform is a good start, but it may also require publishers to face a tougher, more existential truth.