Facebook Launching Paid Subscription Services for Watch Shows

According to an article by Mobile Marketer, Facebook is planning to test paid subscriptions for the first time on it's Watch Platform. They'll apply to on-demand shows and include material from CollegeHumor, Discovery's MotorTrend, the BBC, and selected content from ITV.

Testing is limited to the US and will take place in the next few weeks. Facebook plans to charge monthly fees of $4.99 for CollegeHumor's DropOut, $6.99 for BritBox, $4.99 for MotorTrend and $2.99 for ITV's Tastemade Plus. Subscribers will have access to original content. Facebook will handle payments on behalf of its subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) partners and is expected to take a cut of the subscription sales.



Facebook has looked to compete with the Google-owned YouTube by putting out original content. The social network announced that the audience on its Watch platform had grown by 80%, reaching a respectable 720 million monthly users. That figure is based on visitors who spend at least one full minute on the platform and has risen from 400 million in December 2018. In comparison, YouTube reported 2 billion monthly users in May, which is a figure up from 1.9 billion last summer.

Facebook has tried to expand Watch's programming lineup in the past via the sale of subscriptions to streaming services from major cable networks. However, it's not known how far Facebook has progressed in talks with the cable programmers concerned.

What do you guys think about this? Does Facebook have a chance in competing against all these other streaming services like Netflix?