Fairfax Media’s The Sydney Morning
Herald, The Age and Stuff.co.nz today announced a launch partnership with Facebook in
Australia and New Zealand to continue the social media platform’s global rollout of its
innovative ‘Instant Articles’ program.
Instant Articles features a suite of new interactive tools, including auto-play videos,
interactive maps and audio captions, and improves the speed at which news stories can
be viewed by as much as 10 times compared to standard mobile web articles.
Fairfax’s Editorial Director for Australian Metro Media, Sean Aylmer, said: “From today, we
will use Instant Articles to share a significant number of our news stories daily, delivering
our large and growing Facebook audiences an immediate, radically improved and more
engaging mobile experience.
“We are taking advantage of innovative new technologies – including Instant Articles – to
maximise the audience reach of our quality, independent journalism and enhance the
experience our audiences have with our content.
“Our strategic partnership with Facebook underlines the tremendous mobile innovation
happening at Fairfax and our unrelenting commitment to putting audiences at the centre of
our publishing model.”
Fairfax New Zealand Group Executive Editor, Sinead Boucher, said: “With rapidly growing
audiences on mobile, we’re excited – not just about a faster mobile experience – but by
being able to bring Stuff’s stories to life in new ways using the mobile-driven suite of
Instant Articles interactive features.”
Instant Articles allows users to zoom in and explore high-resolution photos by tilting their
phone, watch auto-play videos come alive while scrolling through stories, explore
interactive maps, and like and comment in-line on individual elements of an article.
Facebook’s Managing Director Australia & New Zealand, Stephen Scheeler, said:
“Expanding Instant Articles in Australia and New Zealand is a significant milestone for the
product and for each of our early launch partners.
“Fairfax is at the forefront of digital publishing innovation and we’re pleased they are our
first local publisher to use Instant Articles in Australia and New Zealand, with the
audiences of the SMH, The Age and Stuff enjoying fast, interactive articles in the
Facebook app,” he said.
“We worked closely with Fairfax Media in Australia and New Zealand to begin rolling out
Instant Articles locally. Internationally, publishers are already sharing thousands of Instant Articles on Facebook each day, and looking ahead we’re excited to partner with more
publishers here to bring the Instant Articles experience to more people.”
Fairfax mastheads remain in control of the content published via Instant Articles.
Fairfax mastheads are exploring opportunities to monetise Instant Articles display and pre-roll
advertising. Existing analytics tools will be used to measure audience data and traffic
to Fairfax’s Instant Articles.
“We expect Instant Articles will accelerate our already strong digital audience reach and
engagement via Facebook,” Mr Aylmer said.
Instant Articles is available to iPhone users. Android will launch later this year, with a small
public beta available now.
Check out Instant Articles on our Facebook pages, linked below:
SMH THE AGE STUFF