Publishers are Seeing 40%+ Traffic Surge Due to Facebook Outage

Major news events, such as elections, celebrity updates, etc., often lead to a large increase in requests to Outbrain’s data centers, meaning publishers across the globe that utilize our recommendation technology see spikes in their traffic. Today, with readers looking for reasons why Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other platforms are down, or maybe simply trying to get to their daily dose of news, many of these publishers are seeing more than 40% week over week increases in traffic volume. Either way, publishers will likely be happy with the outcome.

The graph below illustrates this week-over-week spike, with Outbrain’s global set of data centers serving the traffic without issue.