Facebook engagement plummeting: the free ride is over

Facebook engagement around publisher content is falling rapidly:

There was a dip between July and September 2015, with numbers slowing down for many of the sites since then. The top ten sites are made up of a mix of digital natives (the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed), major global news brands (the New York Times, Fox News, BBC, the Guardian), and others, such as the India Times and conservative site Breitbart.

The decline isn’t restricted to any single type of interaction. Likes, the dominant engagement type, saw a 55% decline for the top 10 sites combined from July 2015 to April 2016. Shares fell by 57%, and comments by almost 64%.

As predicted, Facebook has us hooked on the traffic flow, and is now turning down the tap. Ready to pay for more engagement? Or dance to the Zuckerberg tune by going all-in on video?