Google and Facebook are two of the biggest platforms in terms of size, reach and advertising Revenue.
While they generated the most revenue for Publishers outside of over-the-top (OTT) services, together they only accounted for less than 30 percent of total distributed content revenue, representing less than 5 percent of the total average digital revenue for publishers, according to a study from Digital Content Next (DCN).
And for companies providing data for both H1 2016 and H1 2017 for DCN's Report, distributed content revenue saw a growth by an estimated 37 percent year over year.
The report was based on numbers reported by 20 members of DCN, which represents 75 digital content publishers including The New York Times, ESPN and PBS.
"The revenue earned from distributed platforms does not yet match the investment and tremendous value of DCN members' news and entertainment," DCN CEO Jason Kint said. "The report once again supports our members' drive for better economics which is now happening in parallel to a much larger global debate about the societal and economic harm from certain platforms."
Facebook overtook YouTube in 2017 as the individual platform generating the most revenue for publishers, capturing $1.3 million (50 percent of social platform revenue) in H2 2016 and $1.5 million (59 percent of social platform revenue) in H1 2017.
Facebook, together with Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, represented just $2.5 million of the total $10 million in publishers’ distributed-content revenue.
The report also shows that video revenue continues to drive monetization for publishers. While video represented about 85 percent of all third-party revenue, most of that video dollars went to those that created them. This made them much more expensive to make than text content.
DCN's report is notable because there isn’t a lot of industry data about how much revenue publishers are getting back from the platforms they heavily lean on to distribute their content. And here, it was concluded that revenue publishers were receiving from third-party platforms has barely budged in a year - despite Google and Facebook have stronger grip on digital ad spending.
"The biggest surprise is how little has changed," said Kint. "You’re still looking at a situation where the best in class in news and entertainment isn’t being supported in a way it should be."
The DCN report comes at a time when online publishers have a growing frustration with the monetization they’re getting from the platform giants. This has led to some decrease on the amount of content they distribute to those ad platforms.
They’re also facing concerns with Facebook that said it would show less news in users' News Feed.
