Ads Come To Facebook Stories; Google Extends Olive Branch To Publishers

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Story Time

Advertising is coming to Facebook Stories, a sleeper hit on the Facebook platform that draws 150 million daily active users. Ads will be 15- to 20-second videos that users can skip and are for now limited to branding initiatives, TechCrunch reports. Click-throughs and calls to action will follow. Advertisers can repurpose their Instagram Stories creative easily for the format, and Facebook will help them find unduplicated reach across its platform and Instagram. As stories become the de facto way of sharing and consumers shift away from the news feed, Facebook needs to monetize the feature to keep its massive business growing. “If we don’t do this well, then as more sharing shifts to Stories, that could hurt our business,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said. More.

GDPR PR

Google invited leadership from four news media trade bodies – the News Media Association, News Media Alliance, European Publishers Council and Digital Content Next – to meet with company executives on Thursday to discuss publisher concerns over its GDPR compliance efforts, Lara O’Reilly reports for The Wall Street Journal. The groups published an open letter to Google last month criticizing it for releasing GDPR updates so soon before implementation and skirting the spirit of the law. More.

Seller And Reseller

Amazon is a streaming subscription powerhouse – and not just for Prime, Variety reports. Take HBO, whose main distribution has always been pay TV. Today more than half of its direct-to-consumer subscriptions on streaming platforms like Apple TV or Roku come through Amazon Prime, according to data from The Diffusion Group. Rivals like Showtime and Starz are even more reliant on Amazon. Apple is changing its streaming app to be more like Amazon, likely because Amazon’s curated homepage and content discovery quickly outstripped Apple’s and Google’s app store. More.

But Wait, There’s More!