In order to help promote Facebook Live, Facebook Live has decided to pay publishers and celebrities to get the word out about their growing live video venture. Recently, The Wall Street Journal reviewed a document that indicates tat Facebook signed over 140 contracts that totals over $50 million. Seventeen of these amount to over $1 million.
So far, there isn’t anybody at Facebook that put out a statement regarding the nature of the deals. Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s vice president of global operations, did put a statement out earlier saying that a “broad set of partners” was invited to participate to see “what works and what doesn’t.” They were offered a deal if they did well with Live. Past performance was paramount, as well as constant churn of Live videos to meet the expectations of the social network.
So far, BuzzFeed is the highest-paid publisher though these contracts. The site receives about $4 million for videos that are produced between March 2016 and March 2017. Other high-paid businesses includes The New York Times at a little over $3 million, and CNN at $2.5 million over the same time period.
Other participants includes:
- The American Museum of Natural History
- Internet celebrity Logan Paul
- Sports team FC Barcelona and JDs Armin Van Buuren and Hardwell
Mark Zuckerberg is confident that this can help encourage Facebook users to check the site. According to Facebook, the average of its services watches a lie video three times longer than any other type of video.