I’m still in Facebook detox right now, so take all this with a grain of salt, but I predict that in a few years publishers will look back on “Instant Articles” the way many of them currently look back on their decision to put content online for free. Both decisions will be seen as sucker moves from desperate and short-sighted execs who were fighting yesterday’s battles.

The lure of Facebook instant articles is a big temptation for publishers, and now this: Facebook Will Likely Open Instant Articles to All Brands, Publishers, Grandmas

Isn’t that so very nice of them? They’ll take your surrender on gentle terms, and they’ll provide you some very nice cat videos to watch when you retire because your publishing business is gone.

Think of the logic here. Publishers aren’t getting enough advertising revenue from their content, so they load up their web pages with more and more ads that make their sites look like animated NASCAR. That sends their visitors scurrying off to other sites, or to find a good ad blocker, which hurts their revenue even more. Publishers then wonder if they can support a paywall, but … usually they just wonder about it.

But there is a ray of hope, they think. One of the sites people run to (having been scared off by NASCAR) is Facebook, which is taking over the internet. Everybody (except me — I’m in detox) is on Facebook, and they have lots of genius programmers who can make things fast and simple and furry and lovely, even on smart phones.

The other good thing about Facebook is that they have the volume and the demographic data to make ads more sensible. They can be targeted more precisely, and publishers have the possibility of reaching a wider audience.

And … how could it be any better … Facebook offers to host the publisher’s content and (they’re so very nice) they allow the publishers to sell their own ads to be displayed with their own content.

Gosh they’re generous.

In any event, Facebook is kindly offering publishers a flashy version of yesterday’s business model (selling cheap ads against expensive content) so the publishers can give Facebook the raw material it needs to pursue tomorrow’s business model, which is user data.

Once again, publishers will be the suckers and kids with keyboards will take their lunch.

I showed this article to my son and explained a little of the background, and he asked, “Well, what should they do?”

There’s a relatively straight-forward solution that I’ve discussed before, but … let’s set up the case a little bit.

Here are some of the problems publishers are facing.

• Declining ad revenue.
• Difficulty attracting and keeping audience.
• Difficulty selling their content (e.g., through a subscription or a paywall).
• Competition from the screaming crazies.
• Difficulties with scale.
• Difficulty maintaining the publisher – subscriber relationship.

Facebook is a phony solution, because while it helps with some of those problems, it exacerbates others.

The true solution is for some entity — a large publisher, an alliance of publishers, or some independent organization that actually works with the publishers rather than against them (such as, for example, a fulfillment bureau) — to create a content distribution network that allows publishers to get the benefits of scale and still maintain their relationship with their customers.

I realize that probably isn’t going to happen, so publishers will continue down the well-trod road to complete suckerdom.