Finally some good news regarding Facebook’s ever changing algorithm for news publishers – specifically broadcasters.

At EzyInsights, we analysed several sets of engagement data from the last 18 months, looking at both Post Engagement and Web Share engagement.

During our last look across European publishers, we saw that some public broadcasters benefited the most. We expanded our analysis to include five more major public broadcasters:

YLE Uutiset (Finland)
NOS (Netherlands)
SVT (Sweden)
TV2 Nyherdene (Denmark)
France24 (France) 

The key data we have focused on here is Web Shares – these are a measure of how much activity occurs on content brought to Facebook by individuals from publisher websites. This differs from Post Engagement which shows how much people interact with content posted directly by publishers.

We focused on three 83 day periods:

Period 1: Pre January algorithm change (19th October 2017 – 10th January 2018)
Period 2: Post January algorithm change (12th January 2018 – 5th April 2018)
Period 3: Recovery period (6th April 2018 – 28th June 2018)

The biggest takeaway from our point of view is that periods 2 to 3 saw a rise in engagement for all five broadcasters tracked. This is encouraging for other public media. It means that even after Facebook reduced news content in the newsfeed by 20%, public service media has been the least affected of all publishers.

The drop between periods 1 and 2 was experienced across most news publishers on Facebook. Reuters Institute of Journalism took an in-depth look at the effect on commercial publishers here.

More changes to come

We intend on expanding this analysis to other news publishers, to see if the ‘recovery period’ can also be seen across commercial broadcasters and news websites. It would certainly be an encouraging sign.

If you have any questions about data used here, please contact us at any time at [email protected].