As of April 12, Facebook has opened up Instant Articles to all publishers – big and small.
Previously, Instant Articles was only available to a limited number of publishers in the United States and Britain.
Instant Articles allows publishers to give Facebook mobile users a better experience – through fast-loading posts, mobile-friendly displays, and targeted ads. This helps you engage more readers and monetize your content.
In the U.S., 20% of all page views occur on Facebook. The social network also has 1.51 billion active mobile users. Using Instant Articles gives publishers a huge opportunity to engage this audience with high-quality, mobile-friendly articles.
Here are three ways that you can benefit from adding Instant Articles to your advertising mix:
How News Organizations Can Drive Revenue from Facebook Instant Articles
1. Faster loading times on mobile devices
Image Source: Facebook
Facebook built Instant Articles to solve the problem of slow loading times on mobile devices, which created a bad experience for people who read news on their phones. It used to take an average of eight seconds for an article to load from Facebook’s mobile app.
Instant Articles load 10x faster than standard mobile web articles.
“Slow load times impact publishers of all sizes, especially those with audiences where low connectivity is an issue. With that in mind, our goal from the beginning was to open up Instant Articles to all publishers and we’re excited to be able to do that in a way that makes it fast and easy for all publishers to reach their audiences on Facebook.”
2. Improved audience engagement
Image Source: Facebook Media
Facebook Instant Articles offers many of the features that mobile users expect – such as high-resolution images, autoplay videos, and interactive maps.
This rich experience makes Instant Articles readers 70% less likely to abandon an article. Readers also share Instant Articles 30% more than they share other mobile web articles. Increasing your time on page and social shares can bring you more readers and boost audience engagement.
You can see how your Instant Articles perform with Facebook analytics. For example, you can view data on:
- Article traffic
- The amount of time spent reading each article
- Which photos and videos readers engaged with
- How far readers scrolled in each article
Instant Articles also integrates with your existing analytics and content management systems, allowing you to view a wealth of data about how your articles are performing.
3. Increased ad revenue
Instant Articles offers publishers a number of ways to drive ad revenue. For example, you can:
- Retain complete control over your content, experience, and ads.
- Embed cookies that follow readers, so you can show them the most relevant ads.
- Post your own direct-sold ads and keep 100% of the revenue.
- Monetize your content through the Facebook Audience Network.
Facebook Instant Articles gives you another platform where you can push content to your audience. While it offers many benefits, it adds to the many channels that you must manage.
Since Instant Articles integrates with your existing content management system, you can use Mediaspectrum to unify your publishing and advertising across Facebook and all of your other channels.
Are you taking advantage of Facebook and other mobile opportunities? Contact us today to learn how we can help.
