Dive Brief:
- While organic reach is on the decline, Facebook has continued to promote publishers' pages for free via mobile pushes under the heading "Get Interesting News."
- Brands are now catching on to this phenomenon and are using publishers to post native ads to the social platform.
- When publishers post a native ad from a brand sponsor, the Facebook algorithm doesn't treat it as an ad and the brand benefits by using the publishers' organic reach — something their brand pages are now missing.
Dive Insight:
The loophole that brands and publishers have discovered just goes to show that no matter how Facebook tried to force brands to buy advertising, there is always a way around the process. In this way, the digital world is still a bit of a Wild West. It'll be interesting to see how long this loophole stays open now that it has been exposed.
