Facebook today rolled out Instant Article, a new format that lets publishers create articles that load natively within Facebook's iPhone app instead of sending users off to the Web. In this first release, Instant Article is available only for iPhone.

Here’s how the new platform will benefit users, publishers, Facebook, and marketers.

Users:
With Instant Articles, users will have convenient in-app access to high-resolution images that can be zoomed in, video that auto-plays as you scroll to them, interactive maps, audio captions, and in-line commenting. Users will also be able to access articles faster – it takes an average of eight seconds for a webpage to load from the Facebook app while Facebook anticipates a 10X improvement with Instant Articles.

Publishers:
Publishers will be able to create content using their own publishing tools and convert stories automatically into a format that works on Facebook's iOS app. This will help publishers deliver better user-experience to their audiences.

Publishers will be able to increase ad revenue by taking 100% of total ad dollars (at least for now) from Instant Article. Publishers will also be able to continue to gather and track performance data using analytics tools such as Google Analytics and Adobe's Omnitur.

Marketers:
The release of Instant Article is great news for marketers because the new platform will keep more users on Facebook which means you’ll have more opportunities to show their Facebook ads to your target audience.

Also, you’ll have more chances to find out what kind ads work or which target segment is most responsive to your ads or products. Once you’ve collected this information, you can use it to make adjustments to our other advertising campaigns on other ad platforms such as AdWords (search engine marketing) and improve performance.

Facebook:
Facebook can keep users in its app instead of driving them to the Web. 

While keeping users on its social app may not generate a financial return right now, Facebook can monetize this advantage in the future eventually taking a cut from video or display ads.

If there are other benefits of Instant Article to marketers, let us know in the comments section below or tweet us at @SmarttCanada!