Facebook (FB) Said Sending Fewer Traffic to Publishers

Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) has been sending less and less traffic to publishers since the beginning of the year, amid the social media giant's move to forge stronger bonds with the companies.

DigiDay, citing data from SimpleReach, noted Monday that referral traffic from Facebook to the top 30 publishers fell 32 percent from January through October 2015. For the top 10, that drop was nearly 43 percent.

Notably, SimpleReach's data is for desktop only. The site did note that a sharp, 75 percent drop was also observed from January to February with a smaller drop from March to April.

While mobile might be the growing marketplace for content consumption right now, publishers still draw the majority of revenue from desktop views.

Facebook sent a statement to DigiDay denying that it was sending less traffic to publishers: Over the past two years, we’ve seen referral traffic to publishers from Facebook grow significantly, nearly across the board. As the number of posts to Facebook has increased substantially over the past few months, there has been a corresponding increase in the amount of potential posts to show any one person, which impacts reach. In this newly competitive landscape, we’re seeing results vary by publisher: some are experiencing continued growth in referral traffic while others have seen declines. On the whole, referrals to the top 1,000 publishers are at the same level today as they were in January.

Shares of Facebook are down around 1 percent.

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