Tag: Instant Articles

Facebook Adds Call-To-Action Buttons To Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has added some long-anticipated call-to-action units to Instant Articles, its program for fast-tracking web page loading on mobile. Facebook opened up Instant Articles to all publishers last year, making it possible for brands to put their branded content as Instant Articles as well. But the design of Instant Articles stayed “read only,” with limited options for publishers and content creators to engage further with the readers, until today. Now, thanks to the call-to-action units, Facebook is allowing content creators to drive signups for newsletters and subscriptions.

What Brands Need To Do
Instant Articles is an important tool for brands pushing out content on Facebook because it promises to significantly shorten the page loading time on mobile, which is a big factor in page abandonment. According to surveys conducted by Kissmetrics, about half online consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less and tend to abandon the ones that failed to load within 3 seconds.

This Instant Articles update provides publishers and content creators a direct way to communicate with their audiences and establish a long-term relationship with them. This new feature makes Instant Articles a much more valuable channel for brands to invest their branded or sponsored content in, and more brands considering using Facebook’s social platforms to reach customers on mobile need to take advantage of this new tool.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Adds 360-Degree Photos & Videos To Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues to improve its mobile-optimized, fast-loading content format Instant Articles as it adds support for 360-degree photos and videos. This means publishers can now include 360-degree content in their Instant Articles, allowing users to navigate by turning their mobile device or by tapping and dragging. Facebook debuted 360-degree videos on its News Feed last year and added support for 360-degree photos this June.

What Brands Should Do
Instant Articles provide a way for brands to make branded content easier to access on Facebook and deliver a superior user experience on mobile. This update enables content creators to incorporate 360-degree content into their Instant Articles and make the mobile experience more interactive and engaging. Brands looking to distribute their branded content on social channels should take a cue and start exploring this publishing program and its ad unit cousin Canvas ads.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Adds More Ad Options To Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has added some larger and more flexible ad units to Instant Articles as the company ramps up the monetization in the fast-loading, mobile-native format. Publishers can now bring more of their direct sold campaigns to Instant Articles, including custom, premium formats. And publishers using Facebook’s Audience Network can now engage their audience with video and carousel ads in Instant Articles. In addition, Facebook has also improved support for branded content in Instant Articles to allow publishers to plug in their native ad campaigns.

What Brands Need To Do
As Facebook continues to loosen its restrictions on ads in Instant Articles and offer publishers more options to monetize their content, brands gain more opportunities to reach mobile Facebook users by working with publishers to transplant their campaigns into Instant Articles. Brands looking to make their ads load faster and provide a mobile-optimized user experience can also look into Facebook’s Canvas ads, which are basically “Instant Articles for brands.”

 

Source: Facebook Media

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Facebook Media

How Intel Is Embracing Facebook’s Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Intel has become the first brand to publish on Facebook’s Instant Articles as the brand seeks to reach more people with its branded content. Starting in 2012, the company has been operating a tech-focused digital publication, iQ, to showcase its expertise in cutting-edge technologies and build its brand equity. Now, Intel has started posting content from iQ on Facebook using Instant Articles which does not restrict brands from publishing content as long as they have an existing publishing operation that puts out content that meets Facebook’s standards on a regular basis.

What Brands Need To Do
According to Intel, the U.S. editions of iQ reach its one to five million monthly readers mostly through paid social distribution. So it makes perfect sense for Intel to take advantage of the fast-loading publishing program to make their branded content easier to access on Facebook. Brands looking to distribute their branded content on social channels should take a cue from Intel and start exploring Instant Articles, whereas brands that simply wish to make their ads load faster and provide a better user experience can look into Facebook’s Canvas ads, which are basically “Instant Articles for brands.”

 

Source: Digiday

Facebook Continues Video Ad Expansion

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues to roll out new advertising products,  and they are staying focused on video. The social network is bringing pre-roll ads to video in News Feed as well as within Instant Articles. Quick serve restaurant Jack in the Box is one of the first advertisers to try out the pre-roll ads. Also, the social network is extending support for video ads to third-party sites, both on desktop and mobile, via its Audience Network.

Why Brands Should Care
According to eMarketer, digital video ad spending in the US is on the rise and will reach $9.84 billion this year. With these two initiatives, Facebook is expanding the reach of its video ad network while also offering brands more options to advertise in Instant Articles. As Facebook continues to improve its video ad products, brand advertisers should reevaluate their media mix and consider reallocating their ad spending.

 

Source: AdWeek & Marketing Land

Brands Get Another Tool To Publish Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following last week’s announcement of a plugin that automatically generates Instant Articles pages for WordPress sites, brands are getting another tool to publish their content with Facebook’s fast-loading program. Facebook has opened up Instant Articles to mobile publishing platform Steller, allowing all users, including brands, to use Steller’s app to create and distribute content on Facebook through Instant Articles.

What Brands Need To Do
Since its debut last May, Facebook has restricted access to Instant Articles to publishers only. Now with these two new tools, brands can easily publish content in Instant Articles without piggybacking on publishers’ content. As media consumption shifts toward mobile, it is crucial for brands to start using the tools available to optimize their digital content so as to deliver a leaner, faster user experience to mobile consumers.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook Extends The Instant Article Experience To Ads With “Canvas”

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Thursday, Facebook officially launched Canvas, an ad product that loads full-screen rich media right from the news feed, bringing a faster, cleaner mobile experience pioneered by Instant Articles to ads. Facebook started testing this immersive full-screen ad unit last September, and the company says early tests have shown users spend more time on Canvas ads, with the top Canvas ads gaining over 70 seconds of view time per user.

Facebook is also offering brands a straightforward self-serve tool to help brands build Canvas ads with no coding required, allowing brands to add interactive rich media like animations, carousels, product catalogs, tilt-to-view images, and videos to their ads with ease. Different versions of a Canvas ad can be targeted to different demographics, just like regular Facebook ads.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook made Instant Articles available to all users last week, which means Facebook users will soon be served with a lot of Instant Articles-enabled pages, familiarizing them to the fast-loading experience. And they will soon start to expect a similar experience when it comes to Facebook ads as well. Therefore, brands should take the initiative to use Canvas to create rich-media ads that work best on Facebook’s mobile app.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header image courtesy of the Facebook Canvas site

Facebook To Allow More Ads In Instant Articles

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday Facebook announced that it will soon allow publishers to include more ads in the articles published with Instant Articles. The announcement came a month after some well-known publishers challenged Facebook over the ad restrictions it imposed in Instant Articles, which limited the revenue generated from content they posted. The social network first introduced Instant Articles in May, and now sees more than 100 publishers publishing stories with this feature on a daily basis.

Market Impact
Facebook bending to publishers and loosening its restriction in Instant Articles illustrated the ongoing push-and-pull between content creators and platforms. For brands, increased ad spots in Instant Articles spell more opportunities to reach mobile Facebook users by offering them a quick access.

Source: AdWeek

Facebook To Loosen Restrictions On Instant Articles Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook might soon allow more ads into Instant Articles, a fast-access publishing tool it first introduced in May. Faced with mounting pressure from publishers over the limited ad revenues, Facebook is said to be considering loosening policies that limit the number of ads and prohibit rich media in Instant Articles. Facebook currently only allows one banner ad for every 500 words of content within Instant Articles, while also banning rich media ads within Instant Articles for the sake of faster loading time.

What Brands Need To Do
By loosening its restrictions for ads in Instant Articles, Facebook aims to make nice with the publishers in order to keep them on board with its publishing platform. This move should increase the ad spots available in Instant Articles, which spells new opportunities for brands to reach their audiences.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook Rolls Out Instant Articles To All iOS Users, Tests Full-Screen Mobile Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After a five-month trial period, Facebook has officially launched Instant Articles today, rolling it out to all iOS users while announcing a beta version for Android devices. Though first announced in May, Instant Articles had a rather slow roll-out and has only started to pick up steam in the last month. With this wide roll-out, it will no doubt further impact the online publishing and content ecosystem.

In related news, Facebook continues to test a new form of full-screen, interactive mobile ads, which bear some design similarities to Instant Articles. Earlier this week, fast food franchise Wendy’s became the latest brand to experiment with this new ad product, touting out a mixture of text-layered images and vertical videos – a format often associated with Snapchat – to fully utilize Facebook’s new ad unit.

What Brands Need To Do
With over 60% of Americans now using social media as a news source, content discovery is becoming increasingly dependent on social. About 40% of Facebook users access the social network through mobile apps only, therefore it is important for media owners and brands alike to test Facebook’s new mobile publishing and ad products. With this official roll-out, it is time for brands to start publishing their Facebook content with Instant Articles to take advantage of the rich, quickly accessible reading experience it provides.

 

Source: Facebook Blog