Dive Brief:
- U.K.-based publisher the Guardian has discontinued working with Facebook's mobile Instant Articles pages as well as Apple News, according to a report in Digiday. The move is an about-face, as the Guardian previously ran every one of its articles in Apple News and on Instant Articles and was an early U.K. adopter of both products.
- A Guardian spokesperson told Digiday that the site ran "extensive trials" on Instant Articles and Apple News to better understand how they fit into its overall editorial and commercial objectives and suggested both platforms came up short. The Guardian is continuing to work with Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs), which directly compete with Instant Articles.
- In separate news, Recode reports that Facebook is cutting deals with publishers to pay them to create more video in order to push new ad products. The deals are meant to replace current ones that pay publishers for Facebook Live video content.
Dive Insight:
Instant Articles have been Facebook's attempt at mending what's often been a rocky relationship with publishers, offering up a fast-loading, mobile-optimized proprietary product that keeps readers within the Facebook ecosystem. In the few years since IA's launch, however, the service has proved disappointing for many including The New York Times, Hearst titles and now the Guardian, even as Facebook has tried to offer more monetization options.
Both reports point to the tricky balancing act between media companies, social media and digital technology. In the Guardian's case, it's not completely abandoning optimizing its mobile reading experience with the help of a tech giant. Digiday reported that the publisher's use of Google AMPs continues unabated, and the publisher has said 60% of its Google-referred mobile traffic comes from AMP.
The difference between AMP and Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News is the latter two are both closed-off platforms where publishers basically turn over control of their content. AMP is an open-source program that gives publishers the technology to optimize content for mobile, but leaves them in control of the look and feel of that content along with the advertising.
As for Recode's bit of Facebook news, it's yet another sign that the social giant is putting more of a priority on premium video content after an early bullish period with Live. Live has reportedly proved unduly costly and, like Instant Articles, might not have achieved the editorial, audience and business goals for publishers who signed on at the outset.
Facebook wants to better monetize video and to do so quickly as digital display real estate dries up on its core platform, and more premium publisher content could be the linchpin of that strategy.
