Facebook Updates Ad, Content Guidelines To Support Publishers

To create a more brand-friendly environment, Facebook is updating its advertising and content guidelines.

The tech titan is offering new “monetization eligibility standards,” which outline acceptable publishers and content.

“Our goal is support creators and publishers who are enriching our community,” Nick Grudin, vice president of media partnerships at Facebook, notes in a new blog post.

“Those creators and publishers that are violating our policies regarding intellectual property, authenticity and user safety, or are engaging in fraudulent business practices, may be ineligible to monetize using our features,” according to Grudin.

To use Facebook’s monetization features, publishers must comply with its policies and terms, including its Community StandardsPayment Terms, and Page Terms.

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Facebook is expecting that publishers have an authentic, established presence on the network.

In other words, creators should be “who they represent themselves to be, and have had a profile or Page on Facebook for at least one month,” explains Grudin. Facebook is also requiring that publishers have a sufficient follower base to use certain ad products -- Ad Breaks in particular.

Publishers that are caught sharing content that violates Facebook’s Content Guidelines for Monetization, clickbait or sensationalism, or misinformation and false news risk losing their monetization privileges.

The changes come on the heels of revelations that Russian disinformation specialists used Facebook to influence voters during the last presidential election.

“We have found approximately $100,000 in ad spending … that was connected to about 470 inauthentic accounts and pages in violation of our policies,” Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos wrote in a post, last week. “Our analysis suggests these accounts and pages were affiliated with one another and likely operated out of Russia.”

The adjustment also comes as Facebook is pushing more aggressively than ever into video content. Late last month, the tech titan debuted Watch -- a video hub designed to complement the various videos that users find in their News Feeds.  

Starting in the U.S., Watch will be available on mobile, desktop and laptop, as well as in Facebook’s TV apps. Facebook plans to gradually roll out Watch for all of its roughly 2 billion users around the world.

Similar to what consumers have come to expect from YouTube, Facebook is also positioning Watch as a platform for all types of streaming “shows,” from video blogs to live broadcasts to scripted series.  

While still relatively new, Facebook’s video ad strategy is already showing signs of success. Across its flagship platform and Audience Network, internal data shows more than 70% of in-stream video ads -- up to 15 seconds in length -- are viewed to completion.

Analysts agree that the social network increasingly owes its success to video.

“Facebook’s users are captivated by videos on the platform,” eMarketer forecasting analyst Monica Peart noted in a recent report. “Video, both live and recorded, is a key driver of growing user engagement and advertiser enthusiasm.”

The company's domestic display business is poised to jump 32.1% to $16.3 billion -- or 39.1% of the U.S. display market -- this year.

Peart attributed Facebook’s revenue growth to both usage and time spent, which continues to draw advertisers in ever-greater numbers.

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