The Quint is Facebook’s Indian digital partner for instant articles

Along with a faster experience, Instant Articles introduces a suite of interactive features that allow publishers to bring their stories to life in new ways.

The Washington Post was one publisher that went all in with Instant Articles, running its entire 1,200 daily articles and wire reports on the app. Jed Hartman, chief revenue officer at the Washington Post told the Wall Street Journal, “You have to analyze many factors to determine the monetization potential”.

According to the WSJ, Michael Reckhow, Facebook’s Instant Articles product manager, “said the company received feedback from publishers and is now testing out changes to its Instant Articles ads policies, such as allowing more ads per article and ad formats that were barred previously”.

The Quint is Facebook’s only fully digital partner in India for Instant Articles. “We are working with a publisher ecosystem that is varied and we are excited to see how this product will resonate with Facebook users and publishers in India”, said Mitchell.

Facebook had roped in publications like The NY Times, National Geographic, BuzzFeed, NBC, The Atlantic, The Guardian, BBC News, Spiegel and Bild. Facebook will monitor how different types of content are being consumed and open the platform to other publishers in 2016. “We have been live in United States of America and European Union on IOS and just started initial roll out on android and therefore, it is flawless timing for us to launch in India”, he pointed out.

Instant Articles loads videos and photos up to 10 times faster.

The experience will be similar to its iOS counterpart, articles will be shown within the News Feed and will load significantly faster becauses users do not need to leave the app and launch another to follow an external link to the publisher’s website.

The content comes complete with a high-resolution picture which can be zoomed in on or tilted, an auto-playing video, interactive maps, audio captions, and in-line commenting on particular parts of the article. With 130 million users, it is the second largest user base for Facebook after the US. Mitchel is quick to admit that “emerging markets offers a huge opportunity for us”.

It’s not all been smooth sailing for Instant Articles, though.