Publishers use Facebook and Google for scale but lose ownership
Publishers are continuing to distribute content on platforms such as Facebook for scale, but dislike the loss of ownership, according to a report by Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. While publishers can use social media channels to get their content in front of audiences, platforms like Facebook and Google are "taking almost all the growth" in digital advertising, said Jason Kint, CEO of trade association Digital Content Next. Instead of driving traffic back to the original publishers' sites, readers are staying on the social media platforms and boosting their revenue, he added.
In a preface to a report from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University that examined the relationship between news organizations and platform companies — including Apple, Facebook, Google and Snapchat — one statement addressed the issue publishers face as content is distributed across increasingly more platforms: “The question of who owns the user highlights the biggest tension at the heart of the relationship between publishers and platforms. Is a reader of The New York Times on Facebook a New York Times reader, or a Facebook user reading The New York Times?”

So why do publishers continue to distribute content on platforms other than their own? In a word: scale.