Facebook is looking for a way to allow users of the social network to link their accounts with media subscriptions. In a very complex year, marked by the coronavirus pandemic, news consumption increased on the planet, however, the media have not been able to capitalize on this in revenue due to various factors. Facebook is looking for a way to create a bridge between publishers, audiences … and brands. For months the social network has implemented various adjustments, some of them dedicated to promoting the promotion of media publications in the News Fed, and now it is going one step further. The above comes to the fore as Facebook is Greece Mobile Database testing a new feature whose goal appears to be to help news publishers create a better user experience through a paid subscription system from their platform. This is Account Linking which basically what it does is allows users to link their news subscriptions to their social network accounts so that they do not have to log in repeatedly while reading articles or news. Based on available information, this is made possible by capturing key points in a subscriber’s journey using specific signed Pixel events that include a subscription_id provided by publishers.
“After a user is identified as a subscriber through one of Pixel’s events, they will be presented with a screen where they can consent to the accounts being linked. Users can also choose to unlink their accounts at any later time. For important events that occur outside of your article’s website interface, publishers can use the subscription sync API to send deferred events, such as cancellations by phone or email, ” Facebook notes in a blog post. from their developer page. It is no secret that the media are suffering from ad revenue; the cuts by a large number of advertisers due to the impacts of COVID-19, the less time that audiences spend reading Brother Cell Phone List newspapers, listening to the radio, or watching television, are some of the actors that have contributed to that. In this sense, social networks have become one of the main windows through which people find out, and it is something that Facebook wants to capitalize on through Account Linking, a system that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Athletic, and Winnipeg Free Press. According to the Menlo Park company, subscribers who linked their accounts averaged 111 percent more clicks on articles compared to those who were not part of the test group. In fact, they note that those subscribers increased their follow-up rate. from a medium 34 to 97 percent, according to a TechCrunch report .
Facebook sees a great opportunity in this sector, one that could combine with Facebook News, a feature that began to expand internationally this week and, according to them, can be a great alternative to unite media with audiences increasing more than 95 percent. percent of traffic for publishers. This is important considering that more and more people turn to social networks for information. In fact, online media is the first choice for 46 percent of Internet users (55 percent between 18 and 44 years old) and 21 percent choose social networks as their main source of news, according to the Digital News Report 2020. In fact, although a recent global study published in Statista revealed that almost 40 percent of people follow the news about the coronavirus at least once a day, this has not translated into revenue for the media. A lot has to do with the way the news is consumed, as 70 percent do so from their smartphone, 40 percent from a laptop, 32 percent from a desktop PC, according to GlobalWebIndex.Undoubtedly, this means that users can spend more time on social platforms and, therefore, be potential targets for advertising and e-commerce, hence Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Google are also developing attractive models for them. media.
