Facebook introduces updates for Instant Articles

Facebook Instant Articles Updates include a new navigation surface, smarter CTA & ad placements, and Stories support.

The reading experience of this mobile publishing format has been refreshed with new improvements. The Instant Articles Updates come in after conducting feedback sessions with users and publishers.

Navigation Surface

The updated Navigation Surface makes it easier for users to browse more headlines from the same publisher.

By swiping right from the Instant Article, users can access the “More from” recirculation surface that has a chronological view of up to 50 articles from the publisher. A redesigned footer unit also shows a collection of articles below each article.

Previously, when you swiped through an Instant Article, it would show another random article from the same publisher.

Facebook has also added engagement buttons to the navigation footer to save, discuss, and share Instant Articles, that scrolls away when people are reading.

CTA & Ad Placements

The company has introduced an integrated CTA and ad yield model that estimates the value of a given CTA impression based on regional averages of what Publishers pay to achieve those CTA’s objectives.

This model then serves either a CTA or an ad based on which provides greater estimated Publisher value.

Support For Stories

Support for Instant Articles Links in Facebook Stories has been launched, including those created by Pages on Facebook and those cross-posted from Instagram. Users will now be able to read an IA directly from Stories.

Instant Articles has been an efficient publishing format for media publishers, and it has also been a data-friendly way to read articles discovered on Facebook without leaving the app for users. Instant Articles has 3x faster load times and 30% more time spent than mobile web articles.

The updated Navigation Surface seems to improve the experience for users who come on Facebook to read articles as it aims to smoothen the part of the experience that'll make the users spend more time reading.

Support for Stories can certainly improve discoverability, although we'd have to learn from actual experiences of publishers to understand how effective are Facebook's suggestive yield models.