Facebook Signs Deals With Media Companies, Celebrities for Facebook Live -- Update
22 June 2016 - 5:37AM
Dow Jones News
By Steven Perlberg and Deepa Seetharaman
Facebook Inc. is paying an array of media companies and
celebrities to create videos for its live-streaming service and has
signed nearly 140 contracts totaling more than $50 million,
according to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The social network's partners vary widely. It includes
established media outfits like CNN and the New York Times; digital
publishers like Vox, Tastemade, Mashable and the Huffington Post;
and celebrities including Kevin Hart, Gordon Ramsay, Deepak Chopra
and NFL quarterback Russell Wilson.
The value of individual contracts varies widely, with 17 worth
more than $1 million, according to the document. The document isn't
a comprehensive accounting of all of Facebook's dealings with video
creators, but it shows the broad scope of the tech giant's efforts
to promote its nascent Facebook Live product.
"We wanted to invite a broad set of partners so we could get
feedback from a variety of different organizations about what works
and what doesn't," Justin Osofsky, Facebook's vice president of
global operations and media partnerships, said in a statement.
Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg is betting big on live videos to
encourage the social network's 1.65 billion monthly users to keep
checking the service. The company still is determining how it will
monetize the video service through ads. Encouraging publishers to
produce a steady stream of high quality content is seen as a way to
help get the initiative off the ground.
Most publishers -- traditional and digital -- already are
pouring resources into online video to capture the attention of
their audiences and grab high advertising prices. Facebook is a
major driver of traffic to their properties. Becoming one of its
live-streaming partners in the early going will give their videos
enormous exposure, and could be lucrative once selling ads in the
platform is allowed.
The highest-paid publisher on the document reviewed by the
Journal is BuzzFeed, slated to receive $3.05 million for
broadcasting live between March 2016 and March 2017. Just behind
BuzzFeed is the New York Times, which is to receive $3.03 million
for a 12-month deal. CNN is third, with a $2.5 million
contract.
In March, Facebook said it would start paying some creators to
use its live-streaming product as part of an early beta test, and
some publishers had acknowledged having such arrangements in place.
But the document reviewed by the Journal is the most comprehensive
list so far of participating content providers and their specific
financial dealings with Facebook.
Facebook invited publishers to be part of the program based, in
part, on their track record with live video, Mr. Osofsky said.
Among other factors, Facebook also looked for public figures who
were able to "easily produce and test a variety of live
programming," be it by breaking news or conducting interviews with
interesting people.
The contract values are based on publishers' popularity on
Facebook and the number of broadcasts they are willing to stream,
according to people familiar with the terms of the deals. Some
contracts include requirements related to the length of individual
broadcasts; in other cases, additional payouts are available to
publishers who exceed their minimum requirements.
The list reviewed by the Journal also includes the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and American Museum of Natural History in New York;
internet celebrities like Logan Paul, Andrew Bachelor and Lele
Pons; dance music DJs Armin Van Buuren and Hardwell; and sports
teams such as FC Barcelona.
Food-centric web video specialist Tastemade, which in April
announced it would produce more than 100 Facebook Live shows a
month, is set to receive about $1 million from Facebook for videos
produced in a 12-month period ending in March 2017.
The potential power of Facebook's platform has been evident in
early experiments. In April, two BuzzFeed employees streamed a
Facebook Live video showing them placing rubber bands around a
watermelon until it exploded. It was Facebook's most-watched live
video, until it was beaten out by Facebook user Candace Payne, who
in May filmed herself in her car, laughing uproariously over a
noise-making Chewbacca mask.
As of June 21, the nearly 45-minute watermelon video was viewed
10.8 million times; Ms. Payne's four-minute video has been viewed
157.6 million times.
Live videos are intended to be exclusive to the Facebook Live
platform. Based on early testing, Facebook has said it found that
the average user watches live video three times longer than other
types of video.
Write to Steven Perlberg at steven.perlberg@wsj.com and Deepa
Seetharaman at Deepa.Seetharaman@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 21, 2016 15:22 ET (19:22 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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