Sources: Facebook offering 100% of revenue to publishers for hosted media if they sell ads, 70% if Facebook sells ads
Facebook Offers to Let Publishers Keep Revenue From Certain Ads — Publishers currently post links to content but mobile device speed frustrating users
Context & Ripple Effects
Facebook is responding to slow mobile load times on publisher links by offering to host media directly, with a revenue split that depends on who sells the ad: publishers keep everything if their own sales teams close it, 70% if Facebook does. The pitch lands ten days before Re/code assesses that Instant Articles' 100%-revenue-and-analytics terms add up to a good deal, at least for now.
The split is also a template Facebook keeps revising: by December it loosened Instant Articles advertising rules to allow more ads per article and Facebook-only campaigns ([[a:837515]]), and by 2017 the hosted-content model extended to video with a 55% share benchmarked against YouTube ([[a:915611]]) and guaranteed monthly payments for committed video volume.
First-order effects
- Publishers face an immediate trade-off between reach and control: joining means ceding hosting and audience data to Facebook, while staying out leaves them competing with faster-loading hosted rivals inside the same feed.
- Publisher ad-sales teams gain a new inventory line where they capture the full rate, making their margin versus Facebook's 30% cut a direct internal argument over who owns the client relationship.
Second-order effects
- The 70/30 split becomes the reference point other platforms must price against when courting the same publishers — a dynamic visible later when Facebook pegs video revenue-share at YouTube's 55% to stay competitive.
- Ad buyers gain a choice between Facebook-sold campaigns and publisher-sold inventory on identical placement, pressuring both sides on pricing and shifting bargaining power toward whichever party controls measurement.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, news distribution consolidates around platform-hosted formats whose economics are set unilaterally by the platform, leaving publishers negotiating take rates rather than owning destinations — the structural question behind today's regulated-platform-take-rate debates.
The trend: Platform-hosted publishing is replacing the outbound link economy, with each successive revenue-split offer — 100/70 here, 55/45 for video two years later — ratcheting publishers deeper into Facebook-controlled distribution.