Publishers believe they could lose 5 to 10 percent of Facebook referrals from the latest algorithm changes

You might have heard: Last week, Facebook announced it would tweak its algorithm to prioritize posts from friends and family over posts from publishers

But did you know: Most publishers say it’s too early to discern the effects of Facebook’s most recent algorithm change prioritizing friends and family over publishers’ posts. However, Ken Doctor reports that some publishers believe they could lose as much as 5 to 10 percent of Facebook referrals as a result of the shift. But Doctor writes that won’t necessarily translate into lost digital revenue: “At five percent plus loss, that’s a loss of about two percent of overall traffic. That number, though, gets more interesting. If publishers lose two percent of traffic, will they lose two percent of their digital revenue? No. Figure that for every two points of traffic, on average, publishers will lose one point of digital ad revenue.”

+ Facebook’s changes won’t be bad for all publishers, Parse.ly’s Kelsey Arendt predicts: “It sounds like the changes may actually help smaller sites, including local news organizations. One of our biggest local legacy publishers found that keying into a specific ‘group’ on social media — like your local community — gave them a substantial lift. They figured out what stories resonated with their community, and in what way: which stories create impact on social, which stories garner more readership from social, which stories do both, and where is there potential for follow-up. Facebook’s latest algo is more sensitive to an individual’s network, as it is more dependent on how your readers share and interact with your content offsite.” (MediaShift)

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from American Press Institute http://ift.tt/2a8Vx8T