Facebook now offering publishers money to create live and produced video

According to a report by Recode, citing multiple sources, Facebook is now willing to pay publishers to create more produced video content to the social network. The move comes as part of wider plan to push the company’s new ad products and the company will apply to both live and produced video.

The new deal will replace the earlier agreements Facebook signed with publishers (regarding live video) a year ago and has been designed to encourage publishers to create produced videos. At the same time Recode’s sources also state that the new design still favours publishers paying for live video.

As per the report, Facebook will put on offer a monthly sum in return for a minimum amount of videos produced every month. The deal as mentioned earlier supports live video as well, but Facebook is looking at a balance so live content cannot account for more than half of the monthly quota.

There are other conditions as well. For instance, the produced videos need to be long enough to allow Facebook to drop in at least one ad in the middle of play. In all probability produced videos would need to be at least 90 seconds long, while live videos at least six minutes in length in order to make it count.

Coming to payments, Facebook will recover the money from ads placed in these videos. Once Facebook makes its money, 55 percent goes to the publisher, while, 45 percent goes to Facebook.

The article states that major publishers including the New York Times, BuzzFeed, Washington Post and Vox Media have been making money from Facebook over the past year thanks to their Facebook Live videos.

For now publishers will indeed need to wait and watch as to how the pre-roll ads (on YouTube) work compared to mid-roll ads on Facebook. But if everything goes as planned, Facebook publishers who are billions of view could be looking at major payouts.