Facebook has updated Instant Articles. They’ve changed the navigation interface, added smarter button and ad placement, and included support for Facebook Stories.
Instant Articles were first introduced in 2015 and were made available to all publishers a year later. These are articles that are displayed within the Facebook mobile app and their main advantage is their loading speed. This is up to 30% larger than if the articles were loaded on some website. Now Facebook has announced an update.
New browser interface
In Instant Articles, you will find a customized interface for navigating and displaying articles. You can now “browse” the publisher headlines even faster while searching for different topics from your favorite sources. When you swipe to the right, you will see a “More from” option along with a personalized and chronologically ordered list of up to 50 articles from that publisher, just like “Articles you might be interested in”.
The navigation in the footer also includes new dedicated engagement buttons that let you save, discuss, and share Instant Articles. As you read the article, the footer disappears to increase the visibility of the content.
Smarter CTA buttons and ads
Facebook has also integrated a new model that makes call-to-action and ad placement buttons more sophisticated. The CTA buttons invite users to like the publisher’s site, download their application or subscribe to their newsletter. Like advertising, however, Facebook has “served” them in a not-so-systematic way.
The new CTA model now estimates the value of call-to-action impressions based on the average amount that publishers in a given region can pay to achieve their goals. The ad utilization model then displays a call-to-action or an ad, whichever gives the publisher a higher estimated value. It can then assign a value to the CTA conversion.
Support Facebook Stories
Articles can also be newly inserted by publishers as a link to Facebook Stories. These links include not only links created by pages, but also links that are cross-linked from Instagram. Users can read the article directly from the story.
