In his latest idea to attract cash to Facebook, chief Mark Zuckerberg is hawking “Likes” to advertisers. (WireImage)
On the hunt for new revenue streams, Facebook is pitching TV chiefs on a new online video ad model that would monetize its popular “like” button, The Post has learned.
Under the plan being discussed by the social network giant and some cable TV executives, Facebook would give the networks the ability to ascertain the popularity of certain video content on its platform while taking a cut of the added ad revenue created by the increased exposure, sources said.
The idea has been met with mixed reviews.
“It’s hard to pin down the measure of a like,” said one senior TV executive, who added that any deal would likely have a cap to limit a company’s exposure to paying for an astronomical increase in likes.
So far, Facebook’s online video advertising revenue is close to zero — but growing that business is key to rivaling Google’s YouTube and improving its share of media ad budgets.
Facebook is under pressure to goose ad revenue. The firm revealed in initial public offering documents that first-quarter revenue fell 6 percent, to $1.06 billion, from the previous three-month period.
Execs at the Menlo Park, Calif., company want to host more TV-related video at the site, sources said, and its initiative to help increase TV ratings by boosting the exposure of some video clips is part of that plan.
The Facebook plan is piquing some interest in TV land — though details of how it would work are still not clear.
It’s uncertain, for instance, whether any programmers would put entire shows on the Facebook platform. The social network now hosts mostly trailers and clips.
Facebook is telling cable-TV executives that if it can increase likes on, say, a video clip of a popular show such as TLC’s “Cake Boss” or TBS’ “Conan,” then it deserves a piece of whatever advertising is attached to that content.
The Mark Zuckerberg-led company already has signed Time Warner’s TBS to such a pact.
While Facebook offered up few details on the TBS pact, a spokeswoman said the deal “leverages our premium ad products and their reach against Facebook users, and as such the creative execution can and probably will take form as video.”
TBS sold the idea to advertisers during the upfront season in May as a way to incorporate a social media element into buys, though it has yet to announce any ties.
“If you have 2.6 million likes and Facebook drives that to 4.6 million, then they would share a piece of the additional likes,” one TV source told The Post.
“If you do an $11 million deal with an advertiser some of it would go to Facebook,” the source noted.
Social media interest is often cited as driving ratings of TV shows, but likes aren’t always equal to the show’s popularity. For example, top-rated “Sunday Night Football” has just 421,000 likes, while “Cake Boss” has 4.5 million.
Chompon, a daily deals online platform, estimated in February that a Facebook like is worth $8. A Tweet, by comparison, is worth $5, it said.
Brian Wieser, analyst at Pivotal Research, forecasts that total online video ad revenue will grow from zero, where it is now, to $765 million in the US by 2017. He estimates filmed entertainment revenue, for video services, would equate to $509 million by the same period.