Instant Articles CTA Units: Facebook's latest update for publishers

Facebook is taking a step further in their relationship with publishers all over the world with a new update for Instant Articles to now offer CTA (Call-To-Action), after working with more than 100 publishers for the beta program.

With the new Instant Articles CTA units, businesses can allow readers to (1) Sign up for a newsletter through their email address, and (2) a Page Like Call-To-Action unit.

Publishers have been pushing for direct lines of communication with their readers, in order to add more value to their businesses on Facebook, and the new Instant Articles CTA will be rolled out next week.

Through the Email sign up CTA will be flexible, and businesses can choose to craft messages as per their communication strategy, and readers can sign up for newsletters by sharing their email address.

Page Like CTA ensures a reader receives updates and future posts from a given business if they find valuable content.

One of Facebook’s partners for the beta program, Slate, the email sign up CTA has worked wonders, amounting to around 41% of their email newsletter growth over a duration of two months.

“We currently use the Email call-to-action unit for Instant Articles to drive signups for our daily newsletter list. Over the past two months, the CTA has accounted for 41% of our total list growth. That is a meaningful number and we’re looking forward to partnering with Facebook to continue to grow the program from here.”, Chris Schieffer, Senior Product Manager at Slate.

Facebook says they are only getting started with Instant Articles CTA, and are testing two new applications, namely, Free Trial CTA and Mobile App Install CTA, which needless to say would change the game for a lot of publications on Facebook.

“Facebook Instant Articles is now one of our highest performing acquisition channels for driving email newsletter subscribers. Over the last three months, IA CTA’s generated 29% of the HuffPost Morning Email signups. We also found that signups acquired via Instant Articles are just as likely to stick around as signups obtained from our own sites. We’re excited to work with Facebook to figure out how to drive other actions that help us build deeper relationships with readers, like mobile app downloads.”, Mark Silverstein, Head of Business Development at The Huffington Post

“We are continuing to collaborate with our partners to drive value through call-to-action units in Instant Articles. We’re grateful for the participation and partnership to date, and we look forward to identifying additional opportunities to drive deeper engagement and build relationships between publishers and their readers on Facebook.” Josh Roberts, Facebook Product Manager signs off.