Facebook to extend Instant Articles programme to publishers big and small

Facebook has announced that it will extend its Instant Articles programme to all publishers from 12 April 2016 at its F8 conference.

Facebook launched Instant Articles — its attempt at being a publishing platform — back in May 2015, with just a few publishers. During the launch, Facebook chief product manager Chris Cox said that “Fundamentally, this is a tool that enables publishers to provide a better experience for their readers on Facebook.”

The Instant Articles programme will be available to all publishers, big and small, all around the world, allowing more publishers to create fast and immersive reading experience for their readership on Facebook.

“We built Instant Articles to solve a specific problem—slow loading times on the mobile web created a problematic experience for people reading news on their phones,” the company’s blog post explains.

Read more: Facebook launches Instant Articles to everyone on iPhone, coming to Android later in the year

The social network giant says that media organisations and journalists are an important part of Facebook, thus the creation of Instant Articles. The company stresses that publishers have full control of their stories’ visuals, as well as data and ads. Facebook benefits from Instant Articles by restricting traffic leaving the platform, venturing onto other sites.

“They [publishers] have the ability to bring their own direct-sold ads and keep 100% of the revenue, and track data on the ads served through their existing ad measurement systems, or they can monetize their content through the Facebook Audience Network. Additionally, publishers can use their existing web-based analytics systems to track article traffic or use third-party providers,” Facebook explains.

Facebook encourages publishers to prepare for the arrival of Instant Articles now by familiarising themselves with its technical requirements so that by April when the feature is launched, its all systems go.