Last month, we reported the launch of Facebook’s Instant Articles in India where the company had partnered with five Indian publications. Now, the company has partnered with 20 more publications in India.
Earlier, the company had partnered with India Today, The Quint, Hindustan Times, Aajtak and The Indian Express. This time, the company has partnered with ABP News, Amar Ujala, Dainik Bhaskar Group, Jagran Group, Network18 group, NDTV group and Zee Group.
Along with them, Facebook has also partnered with digital media content portals such as India.com, ScoopWhoop, Scroll, DailyO, Times Internet and The Huffington Post.
With the addition of these new publications, the total number of publishers on the Instant Articles platform has reached 25. Globally, it has partnered with more than 350 publishers.
Publishing partners for Instant Articles will make dedicated and feature-rich content that will be hosted by Facebook and will load within the app. As the won’t have to leave the app, the content loads faster.
Earlier, the feature was only available in the US and Western Europe on iOS platform. Earlier, the company was testing how different types of content gets consumed by the users in the Indian market.
The company said that it is now rolling out Instant Articles to all Android users worldwide. Since two months, the feature was in beta testing with select users. As per Facebook, it takes an average of 8 seconds for a page to load on Facebook’s mobile app. It uses technology in a way that articles load instantly, making the reading experience as much as 10 times faster than on the standard mobile web.
Instant Articles introduces a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways like zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting your phone. Watch auto-play videos come alive as you scroll through stories. users can explore interactive maps, listen to audio captions, and even like and comment on individual parts of an article in-line.
After concerns raised by some publications related to monetization strategies, Facebook changed the advertising policies to allow publishers sell more ads within an article and also sell Facebook-only campaigns for a premium. They will also have the ability to track data and traffic through comScore and other similar analytics tools.
