social@ogilvy briefing: facebook instant articles

Facebook | Instant ArticlesMay 15, 2015

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What is it?

Facebook is now offering publishers the opportunity to host their content directly on the

platform. This new type of content is called Instant Articles. Stories from partner publishers

will now appear entirely within the Facebook (mobile) app, meaning you’ll never have to

leave the app. Ever.

Facebook Instant Articles

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Offering a Better Reading Experience

• Richer: Instant Articles will introduce interactive features

like embedded tweets, auto-play videos that come to life

when scrolling, interactive maps and graphics, audio

captions and possibilities to comment on individual parts

of the articles.

• Faster: Beforehand publishers have had to link to their

articles, which have taken up to eight seconds to load.

With Instant Articles the reading experience will be up to

ten times faster, according to Facebook.


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Features

The most significant feature of Instant Articles is

the speed in which users can view the full article.

Additionally, articles served through the new tool

can include:

• Cinemagraph cover photos

• Autoplay video that lay and play seamlessly

within the article

• Rich, high-definition photos that users can

zoom in on

• Interactive maps

• Audio captions that allow you to hear the voice

of authors or key influencers

• The ability to share or comment on specific

points within the article


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Where There’s Facebook, There’s Controversy

Despite rumors of the new offering circulating for some time, the

launch of Instant Articles this week has reignited a slew of criticism

about the beginning of the end for Journalism. Specifically, critics

worry that publishers will soon lose control of the content they are

creating and distributing.

If Instant Articles becomes a necessary method of content distribution,

the fear is that publishers will have to edit their content to fit Facebook

standards.

Also, smaller publishers and brands who rely on referral traffic from

Facebook are afraid that already limited organic reach of their posts

will be threatened until they are granted access to the Instant Articles

publishing tool.


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Why it’s Good for Publishers

Nine publishers have partnered with Facebook for the

launch: The New York Times, National Geographic,

BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC

News, Spiegel and Bild.

All content for Interactive Articles will be created by

the publishers in their own systems and then

converted by Facebook to fit the Instant Articles

format. After publishing on Facebook publishers will

have the ability to track data and traffic to

continuously shape content to audience interests.

Apart from creating a smoother reading experience

the Instant Articles offer a new possibility for

publishers to make money, as Facebook allows

publishers to sell ads in the articles and keep the

revenue.


“Instant Articles lets [publishers]

deliver fast, interactive articles

while maintaining control of their

content and business models.”

– Chris Cox, Facebook Chief

Product Officer

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How can brands use it?

In the immediate future, there’s an opportunity for

brands to get involved with Instant Articles via

native advertising. Unfortunately, these ad

placements are premium and exclusive for

publishers’ content. So even if a brand cannot

post an Instant Article, they could buy ad space

within an active publisher’s Instant Article.

Once Instant Articles does become available to

brands, it offers another layer of content

distribution.

In the meantime, brands can try partnering with

approved publishers to create branded content for

the platform, knowing that the return will be a

higher likelihood that users will see the content in

their newsfeeds, but the articles will not be driving

web traffic.


National Geographic will run ads inside Instant Articles

promoting its paid subscriptions. Source: TechCrunch

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What’s the verdict for “Journalism”?

Right now, it doesn’t seem like Facebook’s main goal is

increasing ad revenue from content publishers or

controlling the content they are distributing. Instead,

they are interested in keeping users engaged within

their own app longer, and making the Facebook News

Feed more relevant.

This is good for content distributors. They still have

control of the all content they’re putting out there,

although should Instant Articles become a

“requirement” for these publishers, that will essentially

force publishers to somewhat “let go” of the ability to

completely select their content distribution strategy and

ad strategy.


“This is a living page. This

is a living, breathing article

that is beyond just words.”

– Shezad Morani, Creative

Director NBCNews.com

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Implications

This changes the measurement game for publishers while certainly improving

Facebook’s results.

Site traffic will decrease as one of their top referrers disappears (unless of course they

continue to use promoted posts AND Instant Articles). Time on site will likely decrease

as well as, the likelihood of navigating back to a home page is no longer a possibility.

However, since the birth of native advertising and the rise of content marketing, the

home page or “cover” has become less relevant. This does allow the actual story to

be the hero rather than the creator.


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What’s next?

Facebook is planning to eventually roll out Instant Articles to any publisher that shares

stories on Facebook. However, they are inviting publishers to upload sponsored

content as well (for a fee of course).

While it’s limited largely to traditional news outlets and magazines, there could be

room in the future for specialty or trade publications to distribute content that they

publish on other platforms more effectively right now. For instance, imagine opening a

quick link to a recipe with a video demo right on Facebook versus clicking through on

Pinterest, or reading posts/watching videos from your favorite bloggers and

YouTubers within one dynamic, organized, interactive set of articles.

As with previous innovations, we can expect platforms like Twitter to unveil similar

functionality in the future. Plus, we expect Facebook to whet brands’ appetites with

streamlined functionality before increasing pricing, but for now we can appreciate the

new tool for what it is, a product that allows users to consume fast, interactive content

on a widely used, trusted mobile-first platform.


social@ogilvy briefing: facebook instant articles

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