Facebook working on increasing monetization for news media: exec

MONTREAL — Facebook Inc. is increasing opportunities for the news media to monetize content, the company’s Canadian head of public policy said Wednesday, citing initiatives like Instant Articles and Facebook Live. Kevin Chan made the comments at a conference held by Canada’s Advanced Research and Innovation Network (CANARIE), a week after newspaper publishers told parliamentarians that global companies like Facebook and Alphabet Inc. were hurting their ad revenue. “We do take our responsibility seriously here in trying to help, and we’re building products that are going to help people monetize directly,” he said. Chan said Facebook was experimenting with including advertising breaks on its Facebook Live live-streaming platform. “We’re still trying to get feedback that it actually works, that people actually like it, that publishers like it,” he said, noting that publishers using its Instant Articles feature get 100 per cent of the revenue. He argued that Facebook allows news media to reach audiences they wouldn’t be able to otherwise, given that “today, a good majority of Canadians will encounter news articles first on Facebook.” “But the challenge, I think, is that it hasn’t come with the monetization benefits,” he added, noting that’s part of a wider problem traditional media have had with the emergence of the Internet. During his CANARIE presentation, Chan also touched on the topic of false articles being shared on Facebook, something that has emerged as an issue in the recent presidential election in the United States. He said that such articles account for “less than one per cent of the content that you see on Facebook.” “We are spending a lot of time trying to figure out what we should do about it. We take it seriously,” he said. At the same time, Facebook doesn’t want to be “the arbiters of what is truthful and what isn’t. We are a platform.” He also noted that usage of Facebook by Canadian politicians has increased over the past year, accelerating with the 2015 federal election, when now-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the “first leader globally” to launch his election platform live on Facebook. “We are seeing people experiment with this format not to just talk about personalities, but also talk about substantive, serious issues,” he said. “Now with Prime Minister Trudeau in government, he has brought that style of engagement with Canadians and consultations with Canadians into government.” — With reporting by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca and editing by Charelle Evelyn at cevelyn@thewirereport.ca

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Facebook working on increasing monetization for news media: exec

Broadcast | November 23, 2016

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