India experience is unique because of the scale & the different languages: Andy Mitchell

Interview with Director, Global Media Partnerships, Facebook

With more than a billion active users and $18 billion in revenues Facebook is by far the biggest social media firm in the world. As audiences go to other platforms, including its own WhatsApp, and people post less on Facebook, it keeps coming up with ways to expand both its reach and relevance. Instant articles, a service where publishers can choose articles they want to put on Facebook so that users can see them faster on their mobiles, is one such initiative that was launched last year. Vanita Kohli-Khandekar had a telephonic chat with the New York-based Andy Mitchell, director, global media partnerships at Facebook, on the experience. Edited excerpts:

What have 11 months of Instant Articles been like?

Our approach to media has evolved. When I joined more than five years ago, I was one of the first people with direct media experience (CNN, The Daily Beast). Over the course of these years my team (which mainly has people with direct media experience) has been working with the product team to create products that offer value. We started to talk to publishers more than nine months before the product went live. We knew that if Instant Articles has to be successful at a scale that interests Facebook it had to be oriented to how publishers wanted to work. There was a lot of negative speculation on the business model, analytics. But, because we were informed by publishers, the response had been positive. We have worked closely with publisher partners to make changes to the product. For example, rich media ads were not allowed. This was hampering their (publishers') ability to monetise. Now, they are allowed.

Consumers love the speed and design. As people see more Instant Articles in News Feed, they read 20 per cent more Instant Articles than mobile web articles on average. At the F8 (The Facebook developers' summit held in April), we announced that Instant Articles is now open to any publisher from around the world. We are also offering significant data updates at the programme level.

How many publisher partners do you have currently?

Globally, over a 1000. (The New York Times, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, BBC, et al). In India, there is The Quint, Indian Express, India Today Group and others.

What are the consumption patterns like?

Instant Articles are clocking a median load time of about half a second compared to an average of eight seconds for articles loading on the mobile web. As a result, users are 70 per cent less likely to abandon an article because it is not loading. People share 30 per cent more Instant Articles than mobile web articles on an average.

What has the response been like in India?

Instant Articles in India, on a second generation (2G) network, on a phone from 2011/2012 loads over seven times faster than a mobile web articles does on the latest iPhone in the US. People on slower connections in countries like India, click on 20-40 per cent more instant articles than mobile web articles on average.

Is the India experience different from those in other markets?

Well, it is unique because of the scale and the different languages. Our team has a spent a lot of time, figuring out ways around the slow communication networks and range of devices. It is a complicated market for us. The overall experience, however, is same. Except that, the volume of publishers in India is very large, India does not seem very different from other emerging markets.

What are the big challenges?

Just understanding where publishers are getting value and making product changes, making it a better business proposition for publishers.

How does the monetisation work? Who sells the inventory?

In some cases, the publishers sell it directly, in others, Facebook does it. (Note: Facebook keeps 30 per cent of the revenues if it sells the ad. If the publisher sells it, he keeps 100 per cent).

What is in it for Facebook?

The value for Facebook is it offers more content for people to discover, for them to come back and spend time on it. For publishers, it helps increase reach and monetisation. And for consumers, people value the experience quality.

There is a lot of angst among publishers on the value of direct traffic versus the indirect one that platforms such as Facebook give. Comment.

People were discovering content before Instant Articles. This just helps better discovery. There is no trade-off for publishers. For Facebook, the potential upside is that the network delivers better value over time.