Facebook to open Instant Articles to all publishers in April

Facebook will open its Instant Articles feature to all publishers, irrespective of their size and location, at the Facebook Developer Conference (F8) on 12 April 2016.

The key functionality of the feature is that it reduces load time of stories and provides a more interactive user experience with automatic video play and the ability to zoom into photographs easily.

To date, the feature has been open to a few publishers around the world including the National Geographic, India's national masthead Hindustan Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

Publishers will have full control of the way their content is displayed, as well as the ability to display ads from their advertising clients, Facebook said in a blog post.

"With Instant Articles, publishers have full control over the look of their stories, as well as data and ads. They have the ability to bring their own direct-sold ads and keep 100% of the revenue, and track data on the ads served through their existing ad measurement systems, or they can monetise their content through the Facebook Audience Network."

In terms of measuring audience, the social media giant stated: "Publishers can use their existing web-based analytics systems to track article traffic or use third-party providers. They can do all this while accessing a rich suite of multimedia tools to create dynamic, interactive stories that will load quickly everywhere on Facebook, regardless of where in the world their readers are."

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