US★Facebook Launches News Service, Partners with 9 Media Companies
U.S.-based Facebook partnered with nine major European and American media companies to launch "Instant Articles," a new news delivery service enabling comfortable news reading, in May. According to Ad Age, the initial partners include NBC News, The New York Times, BBC News, The Guardian, Bild, Der Spiegel, BuzzFeed, The Atlantic, and National Geographic.
The primary goal of introducing this new service is to reduce the time it takes to display news. While Facebook hosts a vast amount of news articles shared by users, reading these articles previously required clicking a link to navigate to the publisher's site. Opening a separate browser to load and display the article took an average of 8 seconds, making it the most time-consuming content on Facebook.
Instant Articles enables publishers to deliver articles directly to Facebook. This is expected to make display times ten times faster than before. Furthermore, media outlets can embed high-resolution photos, autoplay videos, interactive maps, and audio captions within articles. For users, the design incorporates the ability to "Like" and comment on each article, promising a "richer news experience."
Regarding ad revenue, publishers can sell ad space within articles uploaded to Instant Articles themselves and keep all the revenue. Alternatively, they can choose to use Facebook's ad network, which places ads as in-app banners or native ads. However, in this case, publishers pay Facebook 30% of the ad revenue.
Regarding user data accumulated by Facebook, publishers can track and understand it through external analytics tools like comScore or Google Analytics. BuzzFeed plans to use this opportunity to collaborate with Facebook and advertisers, establishing a dedicated team to develop sponsored content. They envision a blueprint where editors monitor articles distributed on both their own site and Instant Articles using analytics tools, then optimize distribution based on the data gained.
Mobile devices now account for over half of visitors to media companies' own websites. Facebook possesses vast user data, both in quality and quantity, making it arguably the largest source of mobile traffic. If Facebook provides this accumulated data to media companies through Instant Articles, it could lead to a surge of media outlets seeking partnerships. Plans for expansion in Japan are currently undecided.
Source: Ad Age
New York Times, BuzzFeed to Publish Directly to Facebook
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