Why the Subscription-based model?
Subscription business models are something that has become very common all around the world. Facebook has continued to come up with new features and improvisations on its platform from time to time. Facebook caters to different types of content. Be it News articles, media updates, video content, or anything else that you need.
2.7 billion people use Facebook all over the world. One major issue faced by most of the Facebook users while accessing the news content and media articles was the tedious task of logging into the news organization’s account and going through their paywall. Facebook identified these problems and has been running a survey and doing research on coming up with a workaround. Early in June this year after a Facebook test group showed 111% more click rates on articles as they had their news accounts linked with Facebook as compared to those who did not, was one step forward towards the potential success of the subscription business model.
Benefits of the Subscription business model proposed by Facebook
Most of the news subscription apps and websites, let you access the articles only after logging in or signing up. Going through the paywall over and over again is very irritating and causes most of your subscribers to retreat rather than read the articles. This smart move from Facebook is definitely a threat to the big and famous news organizations in the world.
Currently, Facebook’s strategy is focused on the Facebook news tab and the local news subscription accelerator. Now, Facebook is in talks with publishers all over the world for potential collaboration on linking Facebook accounts with news subscription accounts. The aim is to better the user experience by making it seamless for newsreaders on Facebook. At the same time, this Subscription business model will help publishers get more account subscriptions, which will help then create a stronger bond and engagement with their customers. Another benefit of this smart subscription linking tool is that subscribers of a few eligible publishers will gain access and visibility to more news articles from their US publishers on their Facebook news feed as compared to other users.
Future prospects of the Subscription business model by Facebook
Talks with various partners and potential publishers are in progress. These initial product tests will help Facebook collect data and analyze the customer retention and engagement difference of users using the smart linking tool as opposed to those who are not using it. Facebook is working on making it possible for users to initiate the linking process directly on the publisher’s website.
Presently a few newspapers like the Athletic and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution are a part of the US subscription business model testing. Facebook granted access for Instant article subscriptions last year. This enabled publishers to retain 100% of the revenue for each new subscription added. Facebook is aiming at doing something similar with the smart subscription business model.
