Several independent publishers told Press Gazette they have been removed from syndication platform MSN without being given any notice.
Microsoft said it regularly reviews content and partners “based on a range of business, quality and operational considerations”.
Christen da Costa, founder and chief executive of tech news and reviews site Gadget Review, shared on Linkedin that the outlet had been removed from MSN earlier this month.
Representatives of Techlicious and sports site Bro Bible, both independent publishers, commented that they had also recently been taken off the platform with only a generic notification.
In the post, da Costa said: “It looks like Microsoft is continuing to move toward featuring primarily larger media brands, which means another meaningful distribution channel for independent publishers is disappearing.”
MSN ‘not communicating’ with publishers
Gadget Review had been active on MSN for two years before being removed at the beginning of August, da Costa told Press Gazette.
The newsletter-first publisher accessed the platform via a third-party company called Simple Feed, which told Gadget Review about its removal.
When it was active on MSN, Gadget Review sought to appeal to the platform’s algorithm using listicles and slideshows and a focus on “quality over quantity”.
“An MSN audience took to it, so we run a whole gamut of different things around cars and outdoors and survival and kitchen,” said da Costa.
Gadget Review’s peak for MSN traffic came in August last year with up to two million page views a day, accounting for 98% of its overall web traffic and making “good money”.
Since then Gadget Review has diversified its traffic mix to become less dependent on MSN with increased referrals from Reddit, Google Discover, Google News and Yahoo and via its newsletters
In recent months da Costa said Gadget Review saw a slowdown of traffic from MSN and then a notification from Simple Feed that MSN was changing its algorithm before another to say it was being removed altogether.
‘It’s their platform; they can do what they like’
Gadget Review’s MSN traffic fell from up to 50,000 daily page views in June to 26,000 on 24 July and 8,000 the following day, before averaging around 4,000 a day. One week later at the beginning of August the newsbrand was “terminated” from the platform.
“There’s no ‘hey, this is how the platform’s changing. This is how we want to look at content.’ It’s what serves, from what I can understand, MSN at the time,” da Costa said.
“I don’t think they did anything wrong. I think that it’s their platform; they can do what they like. Obviously as a small publisher it just hurts. There’s just a narrowing of who is going to have a voice, especially in our zero-click environment.”
Da Costa does not expect to see a “massive impact” to revenue from the move, and although MSN did “support a little bit of staffing” redundancies are not currently expected.
Josh Kirschner, founder and chief executive of Techlicious, commented on da Costa’s post: “We are in the same boat. Just a Dear John form letter, with no rationale. One thing we’ve all learned over the years – whether from Google, Facebook, or Microsoft – is that independent publishers were never their ‘partners’, just a resource to be used and then discarded.”
Bro Bible publisher Brandon Wenerd said: “They did the same for us, completely ignoring the fact that we do a lot of original reporting. It’s very frustrating how they treat independent media brands.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told Press Gazette: “We regularly review the content and publishing partners featured across our services as part of our efforts to deliver a high-quality experience for users.
“As part of that process, we may make changes to our content portfolio and partner relationships based on a range of business, quality and operational considerations.”
Bigger publishers including Hello! and the Daily Star have seen MSN become one of their biggest sources of online revenue in the past year.
But since July 2023 US traffic to MSN – currently the fifth biggest news website in the US – has declined by more than 40% to 136.8 million monthly visits.
‘It’s kind of death by algorithm’
Another publisher that was removed, but asked to remain anonymous to protect its business, told Press Gazette they received a notification from MSN “saying basically ‘we’re taking you off the platform, thank you for your time'”.
The publisher added that it seems the platform is attempting to “consolidate into a smaller number of publishers”, perhaps to “establish more quality control, or they want certain content or higher profile-content”.
They added MSN was not a “big driver” in terms of revenue or traffic for them, but that “third-party syndication platforms are extremely important to our ongoing strategy” in terms of brand reach and reputation.
Another publisher told Press Gazette it was removed in some territories while remaining active in others, but has lost 50% of its site traffic as a result. They said MSN had been one of their strongest platforms in terms of monetisation.
They said the change may have been linked to technical issues with how the publisher profile was set up but that MSN told them only it was “reviewing its content portfolio to meet evolving audience needs”.
The publisher said: “It’s kind of like a death by algorithm… the algorithm says no, and no one really seems to be able to undo it.”
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