Instant Articles Publishers
The earliest partners of Instant Articles
Some were very excited and jumped at the opportunity right away. Blazing fast loading time and immersive visual storytelling features seemed like a new, comprehensive way to engage more readers.

The world’s biggest news outlets dipped their toes into IA’s functionalities right away. Some of the early results were quite encouraging, including growth in reader engagement among mobile users, and particularly Millennials.

The Concept Of Facebook Instant Articles
What is Facebook Instant Article
Instant Articles are Facebook’s native publishing platform. Their concept is similar to Google AMP. Traditional articles on Facebook take longer to load on mobile, while Instant Articles are optimized for fast loading speeds. Users don’t have to leave the platform to read them.

A year later after the release, the initial excitement around Facebook Instant Articles began to slow down. Some of the earliest adopters, like The Guardian and The New York Times even turned away from them. Their concerns were less control over ads, and lack of analytics data.

New Features Turned It All Around
In 2018, Facebook introduced new features for Instant Articles. They included “circulation and navigation” that help consumers discover and engage with more content from the publisher. They gave more control over call-to-action (CTA) and ad placements.

Circulation and navigation features referred to a set of buttons within the articles that contain links to more content, or sharing options.

Sharing Button In Facebook Instant Articles
An opened article can contain the option to share it via Facebook Messenger.

Instant Articles Features Sharing
Call-to-action units are available to set up within the platform.

You can select different pop-ups and embed them in your Instant articles. The IA builder that we’re going to describe below, is designed to make it simple to include marketing elements though a self-service management. All pop-ups work at the same speed as other IA elements and include call-to-action buttons that prompt users to take further actions.

Since 2018, Facebook hasn’t stopped for a day in an effort to make IA a great publisher tool for driving revenue.

For example, you can now monitor IA CTAs performance in your account. Insights on each unit’s performance are available along with explanation.

Page-like & Subscription Units
For publishers whose strategic priority is subscriptions, it’s crucial to drive more visitors to the website and offer subscription options throughout their journeys.

Being totally aware of this, Facebook launched a new feature in 2018 allowing to embed subscription buttons in IA.

Instant Articles How To Add Subscription Button
During the testing of a new feature, it turned out that people who saw IA were 17% more likely to subscribe to publications from Facebook app rather than those from website links.

Similarly, page-like units invite readers to like your page instantly without leaving the article. The like will be attributed to the Facebook page that manages Instant Articles.

To enable recirculation within the publisher’s website, Facebook added several options to encourage visitors to delve deeper into your stories.

Suggestions in Facebook Instant Articles
If a reader chooses to proceed with subscription, they can complete it within the app, dropping card details in the field.

Instant Articles in Facebook
Instant Articles Builder
One of the greatest recent roll-outs is a comprehensive platform for articles building without coding. You can download and install the builder and follow the guide to get started.

It seems Facebook is working without pausing to appease publishers concerns. After launching all these advanced features, Facebook claimed they’ve seen an increase in revenue for publishers.

[“source=iotechnologies”]