Report

Meta’s offering real money – if you can get it.

September 15, 2026

Everything old is new again.

Our eighth Blue Engine Collaborative and Lenfest Institute for Journalism poll asked 13 newspaper executives about local news’ original frenemy: Meta.

(This follows last month’s deep dive into how folks are feeling about Google).

No surprises here: About half the respondents still get material referral traffic from Instagram and The Blue App ™, while the other half get little to nothing.

Matt Paxton, publisher of the Lexington, Va. News-Gazette summed up the overall vibe of the respondents well: “We are [a] grain of sand,” he said, “in an ocean of online competition.”

What was surprising, however, amid the stormy seas, is how much some publishers are currently making through monetization and how much of a marketing opportunity exists on Facebook properties.

Let’s get into it.

Real money (if you can get it)

Facebook will pay you for posting on the traditional Facebook app. Publishers that have made their way through the sign-up process and follow Facebook’s suggestions for content production are, generally, being compensated in a modest but material fashion.

Three of your peers are pulling in mid-five figures from Facebook’s content monetization program each year, with one publisher clearing more than $10,000 a month. And though there were many, many higher earners among those surveyed, there were about the same number of publishers who weren’t aware the program even existed.

But even if you know about it, as Santa Fe New Mexican publisher Patrick Dorsey put it, it’s not clear you’ll get access: “We looked at FB monetization, but it seems to be invite-only right now, and we are not sure how you get an invite.”

However, you can do the things that put you in the queue: set your page to professional mode, open the Professional Dashboard in the Facebook mobile app, go to Monetization → Content Monetization, and fill out the interest form. Check yours and see the full instructions here.

After you’ve done that, look at the pages of The Post and Courier, Midcoast Villager, and Anchorage Daily News for ideas on what types of content formats a) work and b) generate strong monetization.

“We changed our article posting approach and now put the link in the comments, and it’s really helped,” said Midcoast Villager publisher Aaron Britt.

This isn’t only a video play, by the way. Meta says 60% of last year’s creator payouts went to Reels — meaning 40% went to stories, photos and text posts.

The Meta marketing opportunity.

Three in four respondents spend $1,000 a month or less on Meta ads.

Not a single respondent spends more than $5,000, and not one calls Facebook advertising “critical” to audience growth.

This is a massive opportunity for the average American newspaper.

What if your expectation for next year was anchored in getting curious neighbors on your email list for under $1 a head rather than a slow flow of dozens or low-digit hundreds from your website?

What would it do to your sponsorship opportunities? How about for your digital subscription sales?

That’s what we’re seeing with digitally native publishers that are spending less than $1,000 per month and seeing outstanding results.

In our Meta advertising work with TJ Larkin, participating publishers are generating email signups at under $1 (sometimes well under). What’s even more surprising: they click and read much like the ones who sign up on your owned-and-operated properties do. Plus, with smart onboarding, publishers are generating new donor and sponsorship leads to boot.

Want to see what a good ad looks like? Check out Meta’s Ad Library to see what Spotlight PA is doing here or what inewsource is doing here for your creative inspiration – and reach out if you don’t know where to start.

A word of caution here: as Anchorage Daily News VP of Revenue Kea Cuaresma pointed out, marketing paid products on Meta properties is a bit trickier, as their experience with subscriber winback campaigns attests. For now, focus on building your email list and work on your paid strategy from there

The bottom line

A mid-Atlantic executive summed up the frustration better than we could: Facebook “doesn’t show our good content even to our followers, and prefers the content we produce that most closely approaches cat videos.”

Fair.

It is also, right now, cutting six-figure checks to a newspaper company you know and opening the door to your neighbors at less than a dollar per email subscriber.

Take what the platform is offering and leave the rest.

Fill out the form. Move the link to the comments. See what you can manage from your marketing budget.

We’re pretty confident you won’t regret it.

This post originally appeared on Blue Engine’s LinkedIn.

If you’d like to find out where your opportunities are to go Beyond Print, check out the Institute’s self-serve diagnostic here. You can find the overall Beyond Print toolkit here.

If you’d like to join the poll, email [email protected]