Facebook Instant Articles Is Adding Video Advertisements

Facebook is going to add video advertisement support to Instant Articles, a platform for publishers that presents articles more quickly to the social network's users. In addition to the new video advertisements, Instant Articles will also get a new ad unit block on top of the ones already available, something Facebook anticipates will boost ad impressions more than 20-percent.

In its present form, Instant Articles lets publishers have one advertisement for every 350 words in the article. For most of the short online articles out there, this change represents a doubling of the number of ads their content will have, and likewise comes with expanded possibilities thanks to the addition of video.

As previously announced, Instant Articles will be opening up to all publishers on April 12, giving any website — regardless of size — the chance to participate. It's a useful thing for users, in that they're able to access articles seemingly instantly rather than having to click a link and wait for them to load. Publishers, though, have been a bit more hesitant largely due to the advertisement limitation.

According to Facebook's Instant Articles manager Josh Roberts: "In our conversations with publishers, these changes popped up as the biggest steps we could take to make the biggest impact." As for the video advertisements, they could be of the auto-play variety or they could be the kind the user has to manually click — the publisher gets to choose. If desired, publishers can have a video ad play before a (content) video.

SOURCE: Wall Street Journal