Facebook is set to launch the second evolution of its Instant Articles feature on its mobile app, making this available to both large-scale and smaller publishers. So how will this benefit media outlets, and will this enable Facebook to generate additional revenue? 

In conjunction with Facebook’s F8 developer conference in mid-April, the site is set to roll out its Instant Articles feature to all publishers. While this was launched last year, it was only available to larger media companies, with BuzzFeed, The New York Times and National Geographic a few examples of early adopters. This has left smaller publishers missing out on some of the benefits, including faster loading times on mobile, and the ability to monetise their content. Facebook states that Instant Articles was initially introduced to allow publishers to offer their readers “a fast and immersive reading experience”. This became the case as the tool was used to keep readers within Facebook itself, as opposed to taking them to external sites where load times may have been slower, and user frustration might have arisen.

Aside from faster loading times, readers have also been able to benefit from user-friendly article pages with less branding and advertising, while media companies have been able to keep the revenue from all ads on that article which they have sold themselves. Instant Articles will also offer Facebook’s mobile app users a richer media experience- image based articles will be able to feature photos showing where these were taken on an interactive map for instance, while readers will also be able to view autoplay videos and listen to audio snippets.

While there are benefits to using Instant articles, there are also restrictions in place, such as limiting the number of ads publishers can include- for instance, the number of ads cannot exceed 15% of the total content. In addition, publishers have to adhere to Facebook’s rule that each ad must be separated by a minimum of 350 words- a potential disruption to their usual ad placement. The other problem that publishers have identified since the tool’s inception, is the pull away from traffic to their site via Facebook, as content is automatically viewable within Facebook itself. This has meant that media companies may have lost out on being able to direct readers around the rest of their site, with links to recommended related articles, off-site content such as their other social media platforms, and a host of other pages.

So does Facebook want to monopolise the world of publishing? It certainly seems like it, as halting the flow of traffic away from the site ensures all articles and blog posts have to be read there- ultimately, there will be less web traffic out. There’s also the case of attracting a greater number of freelance writers or smaller bloggers, as these will benefit from Facebook’s audience. Secondly, any one of these might be able to bring in extra revenue from running ads on their pages- something they wouldn’t necessarily be able to achieve on their own sites, or via a third-party publication.

Do you think Instant Articles will benefit both media consumers and content creators? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.