Facebook’s Notify platform could help publishers allay ad blocking fears

On the face of it, Notify sounds like a more in-your-face version of Apple News from earlier this month. It’s also similar to Moments from Twitter and Snapchat’s Discover, both of which launched this year to try and get people to stay within their eco-systems for longer. Importantly, Notify is an app-based way of aggregating content and potentially monetising ads, something publishers like the Mail Online are all too aware of given the difficulty involved in blocking the ads within them. And it’s why those agencies interviewed by The Drum highlight the app’s potential impact on native advertising across the social network as the one area to watch.

“It looks like Facebook attempting to see if users will download an app for publishers and content creators to push content,” said Tim Shepherd, director of creative technology at RKCR/Y&R. “Interesting as well is that publishers are looking for ad formats that get past ad blockers – and this type of 'native' advertising is partly a response to publisher concerns. Instagram recently added image carousels for advertisers, and I’m sure that a lot of platforms will follow suit in the coming months."

Facebook is keen to secure its status as one of the biggest content delivery platforms around and its using its significant user base to keep hold of their media owners, and the revenue that comes with it. Last month, Mail Online claimed that it was moving more readers to the likes of Facebook and Snapchat, inevitably taking them out of the ad blocker danger zone.

"With its significant user base, Facebook will continue capturing all in-app data across many different apps, the recent one being Notify to build on its advertising targeting and carve out more mobile revenue,” said Katrina Lehismae, head of mobile media at Roast.

“Most definitely the publishers will lose out on revenue and data ownership as Facebook becomes a walled garden."

And the implications of this were laid bare in a recent Wall Street Journal report, which alleged that those 20 publishers using Facebook’s Instant Articles aren’t getting as much money per post as they would from content posted on their own site. It’s partly down to the fact that mobile means smaller advertising real estate but it also because it doesn’t allow animated ads. And while the social network is now experimenting with more creative ad formats, it’s move into the world of notifications with Notify suggests it has its sights set on much bigger prizes and won’t be fighting its corner in the pure content aggregation arena for long.

“Controlling notifications would allow Facebook to own the interface between consumers and the content they want, stripping back the layers of competition that come into play deeper into the device,” said Jo Lowndes, senior strategist at Rufus Leonard.

This becomes a particularly lucrative prospect amid the blurring of content and commerce currently taking place. E-commerce players like Net-A-Porter have made strong moves into publishing – their Porter magazine is essentially a directly shoppable version of Vogue, while content publishers such as Conde Nast have been investing in e-commerce startups and making their own moves into the fragmenting centre ground. Furthermore, there is no reason to believe that Notify won’t, in time, integrate with the WeChat-style messenger services that Facebook is making available to businesses.

“If Facebook can bring together payments, frictionless communication and a highly personalised notifications interface it will be sitting very pretty at the heart, not just of consumer-content relationships, but a wide range of commercial interactions,” added Lowndes.

It's not going to happen tomorrow but in the next few years advertisers and publishers alike will need to start thinking how their content is consistently filterproof or risk being frozen out. Pete Buckley, head of strategy at MEC, said the launch of Notify highlights the growing importance notifications will have in the future communications landscape.

“This evolution undoubtedly represents a serious challenge for both publishers and advertisers as it adds another filter between them and their readers. Both will see more and more of their content distribution dictated and priced based on personal preference algorithms," he added.

“The notification filter has the potential to change both the publishing and advertising industry dramatically.”