It's simplistic to lay publishing's woes so squarely at the feet of Facebook's video stats. This was contributing factor, certainly, but the executives who pivoted to video weren't abandoning 7% margins on text in search of 15% margins — if they were, they'd likely have left the text operation intact and built video atop a successful business. Editorial operations were already struggling! In some cases, the promise of video may have spurred additional investment in publishers that wouldn't have been able to get it with just text. While video is more expensive to produce, the CPMs are also higher, which creates a bigger cashflow. It seems likely that this was a factor in Buzzfeed's NBCUniversal rounds.