All Publishers Can Now Test Ads in the Related Articles Section of Facebook’s Instant Articles

Facebook began testing ads in the related articles section of its Instant Articles in late March, and the results for publishers in the test group promoted the social network to expand the test to all publishers Thursday.

Facebook introduced Instant Articles in May 2015 as a way to enable publishers to deliver media-rich, interactive content that loaded quickly for users, and the social network opened Instant Articles up to all publishers in April 2016.

Product manager Harshit Agarwal said in a blog post that Facebook is paying out more than $1 million per day to publishers of Instant Articles via Facebook Audience Network, adding that the format delivers 20 percent to 50 percent more traffic than traditional mobile web content.

According to Agarwal, over the past six months, publishers using Instant Articles have seen RPM (revenue per 1,000 page views) jump by more than 50 percent via Facebook Audience Network.
More than 10,000 publishers globally are using Instant Articles, up 25 percent in the past six months, and Instant Articles represent more than one-third of all clicks to articles via Facebook.