Nation Media Group embraces Facebook Instant Articles platform

Nation Media Group (NMG) is the first company in East Africa to embrace the use of Instant Articles, Facebook’s recently unveiled platform for publishing and disseminating news stories.

Instant Articles are stories that load and open directly on the Facebook mobile app, meaning that Nation Media readers will now easily load key stories right on their FB timeline.

The media house, a leader in digital publishing, also owns daily and weekly newspapers, television and radio stations across East and Central Africa.

NMG will use the latest medium to grow its superiority in online reach and improve user experience.

Rashmi Chugh, NMG’s Head of Digital, said the team has noted a huge surge in traffic since going live.

“We are the first to begin publishing news content on instant articles on Facebook and it has tremendously increased our audience footprint in East Africa. User experience has improved too,” she said.

Churchill Otieno, NMG’s Managing Editor for Digital, said the media house has begun using Instant Articles for the convenience that the product brings to readers.

“Our work is to package good stories and also ensure that they get delivered to the target audience in a manner that is easy for them to consume. Embracing the new Facebook’s product is a reflection of how far NMG has gone in embracing the digital platform,” said Otieno.

INSTANT ARTICLES

In a statement, Josh Roberts, Facebook Product Manager, said the use of Instant Articles by publishers resulted in a 20 and 30 per cent increase in readership and shares, respectively. He also noted that once readers click on the article, they were 70 per cent less likely to abandon it.

“More than 1,000 publishers worldwide are officially part of the programme, and at every step of the way, we see clear evidence that Instant Articles provides a better reading experience for people and a significant boost for publishers looking to reach their audiences on Facebook,” said Roberts.

The articles, which load 10 times faster than other posts on Facebook, are set to make it easy for people to get news on mobile gadgets even when internet connection is poor.

“We have invested heavily in optimising performance on Android, with the goal of providing the best mobile reading experience for people everywhere, no matter where they are in the world or what connection or device they are on,” said Roberts.