> But advertisers don’t need publishers: Advertisers long ago realized they can pay Facebook directly for traffic.

That's a very good point.

or "advertisers don't need publishers, they can pay the top publisher of the day for traffic"

that's the same argument since yahoo was the top publisher. but the world keep spinning, and you can't reach anybody under 35 via Facebook anymore.

Video playback is also trash on most sites besides youtube when on mobile.

I can be on excellent wifi connected to excellent internet where a desktop browser gets to play the video almost instantly, but mobile chrome will barely show the video. It'll show me empty black boxes, maybe a disabled video position control. It'll sit there like that for a good 30 seconds, then maybe play a 30 second ad, then finally the 1 min clip I was linked for. Often it will again stutter hard when it gets to the clip.

By contrast, loading a mobile youtube page will play the video almost immediately, if not within 15 seconds, even on LTE.

I agree with you with one exception: when a youtube video is preceded by an advertisement. Youtube videos load very quickly, but I have had to give up watching some videos because the 30-second advertisement gets stuck in loading mode. I assume this is because there is a contractual obligation to show the ad at a minimum resolution, while the video itself can be delivered at a low quality and improve depending on the connection.

Completely agree, but I'm curious about why. Why is it that even embedded Youtube videos often fail to play in a browser, but if you click the "view in Youtube" button and go to the [desktop or mobile] Youtube site they work fine? What's Youtube's special sauce?

The company I contract for uses video. But it wasn't a pivot, CNN directly subsidized the genesis of Great Big Story. We have an army of video-makers and are just blowing up, having received a $40MM infusion from CNN earlier this year.

It's the exception that proves the rule. If you want to make money with video, bring your checkbook.

Everyone who pivots to video to try to drive Facebook traffic seems to come to regret it.

A counter example, i.e. a pivot to video that was done correctly, would be the motor trend network of publications.

Excellent article, but it will not be read by people being in charge of publishing houses, sadly.

They lost all credibility when they said Facebook and Google collect 99% of all revenue growth. Which is designed to be as deceptive as possible.

It suggests but does not mean "They keep all that money", "Nobody else gets any money", or even "They are the only thing that's growing".