DECEMBER 30, 2025

PUBLISHER INSIDER

90% of Facebook publishers have generated record revenue in November and December this year (and in 2025 in general). If you don't fall in this bucket, you're doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, 90% of publishers relying on Google Search traffic had their traffic and revenues decimated. If you're in this bucket and haven't pivoted your efforts to Facebook, you're also doing something wrong.

Follow our predictions for 2026 to ensure your news org is on the right path. We happen to be amazing at predicting these things.

🎩 Facebook 2025 Predictions - what we got right and wrong

1. End of Facebook's horrible third-party fact-checking program in favor of Community Notes. One of the most important policy shifts on any platform ever. ✅
2. Shift towards more libertarian content moderation model, unlocking record revenue growth. We actually predicted this one in 2024 the day Trump won the election. ✅
3. Old spam and fact-checking violations removed or over-turned. If you haven't been able to overturn these, you're either doing something wrong or you deleted the post that got the violation and can no longer overturn it as a result. ✅
4. Content monetization program rolled out to more countries than ever. Dozens of countries were added to the program this year. ✅
5. Content monetization program rolled out to more publishers than ever. Did you see all our posts on X sharing screenshots of invites publishers of all sizes got to the program? It's insane. ✅
6. More users than ever will flood back to Facebook as a result of these updates. There's a reason why Facebook is the #1 online source for news, even if people don't admit it. ✅
7. Follower counts will matter once again on Facebook. This is both true and untrue. Pages with large follower counts will generate a higher baseline level of revenue, although smaller pages can still hit similar levels of revenue, albeit with more volatility. ✅ ❌
8. News content will be promoted more than ever before. And boy were we right - any page that focused on news, breaking news and political news is making insane levels of revenue. Just insane. ✅
9. Facebook will release standardized public-facing criteria for the content monetization program. This will happen once Facebook moves from Beta to official public launch in 2026. ✅ ❌
10. Facebook to be considered 'cool' again. Give it some more time... ❌
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💣 Publishing Industry 2026 Predictions

1. 99% of major publishers and news organizations to shift to a Facebook-first model. And we will be a major part of this industry shift as more and more publishers follow our insights. The industry is only getting more volatile, while Facebook only gets more stable and lucrative.
2. Major publishers will have massive recoveries (and re-establish their market dominance) as platforms begin prioritizing high-value content. You may have noticed that all the major platforms like Google Search, Google Discover, YouTube, Pinterest, MSN, Yahoo, Newsbreak and so on had massive cleanups as a result of A.I. content flooding in. The future is obvious: larger brand names, and publishers of any size that are creating quality content, will dominate the online publishing industry.
3. Readers will get tired and bored to death of low-quality A.I. content. Once again, resulting in a massive organic shift towards higher quality content. This will, once again, give quality publishers a massive competitive advantage.
4. Facebook's content monetization program to officially move from Beta to official release, and to release standardized public-facing criteria to join the program. This is when the fun will really start for publishers (if you can imagine it getting even better than now). This is also when every publisher in the universe will start opening dozens of pages.
5. Facebook to once again open up the referral traffic flood gates. Publishers have been complaining about declining traffic from Facebook for years. You can expect this to turn around big-time in 2026 as Facebook follow's X's lead on this. This will also drive more publishers than ever back to Facebook (and away from other platforms).
6. Facebook to start cleaning up A.I. slop and low quality content. Since more publishers than ever will be invited to and join the content monetization program, there will be more content (see: slop) than ever being pushed out on Facebook. As such, they are going to start clamping down on content quality more than ever. But don't worry - although this may heavily impact some, this will only make things better and generate higher RPMs for those actually putting in the work.
7. Facebook premium support will only keep getting better, even better than Google's. It used to take 12 months to resolve issues, then 6 months, then 3-4 months, then 1-2 months and now about a month. Soon it will be days or weeks just like Google Ads.
8. Google Discover to terminate more publishers than ever before, and to start sending more traffic than ever to those that remain. There is no more powerful combination for publishers than the steady earnings from Facebook and the huge revenue spikes from Google Discover. This is likely something that will primarily benefit larger publishers, with exceptions.
9. Content syndication platforms like MSN, Newsbreak, AOL and Yahoo to re-open their doors, offering an additional major income stream to publishers. Publishers were making crazy money by syndicating their content to these platforms, and then most of them got wiped out in early 2025 due to the platforms cleaning house. We're now seeing applications open up again and new sites being taken in on platforms like Newsbreak, expect the others to follow suit now that they've cleaned house. This is another thing that will mostly benefit larger publishers.
10. Google Search will continue decimating publishers. Is anyone surprised? Pivot to Facebook, Google Discover and syndication - don't be complacent.
11. Publisher in a Box to cement it's position as the #1 go-to expert, brand, thought leader and service-provider in the online publishing industry. We're already well on the way there, but expect our positioning in the market to be locked in in 2026.

📢 X Posts of the Year

Publisher in a Box @publisherinabox “If you’re so great at what you do, why do you offer consulting and info products instead of running hundreds of your own publishing assets?” We get asked this question all the time, so let me provide an official answer, including our story and the grand vision for the company. 10:49 AM • Nov 26, 2025 0 Retweets 23 Likes Read 5 replies

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Publisher in a Box @publisherinabox The secret to growing your Facebook Page from 0 to 1,000,000 followers for 90% lower cost is VIRAL CONTENT shared at the RIGHT TIME at the RIGHT FREQUENCY 👇 Paying for Facebook Page likes without running content on the page is a complete waste of money. However, running too 11:35 AM • Mar 18, 2025 22 Retweets 176 Likes Read 21 replies

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Publisher in a Box @publisherinabox This website is attached to a single Facebook page. The website never had ads on it before and the page never had a website traffic strategy before. In just a few weeks we went from 0 website traffic to almost 300k active users. Today we are ranging between 700-800 real time 10:26 AM • Jan 13, 2025 12 Retweets 138 Likes Read 14 replies

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