Advertising and Monetization with Facebook Instant Articles

Instant Articles is designed to give publishers control over the ads experience. Publishers can sell ads in their articles and keep the revenue or they can use Facebook's Audience Network to serve ads and earn an industry standard revenue share.

Using Direct-Sold Ads

Publishers can serve banner ads that have been sold directly by their own sales team into their Instant Articles. Publishers keep 100% of the revenue generate from ads they sell themselves.

To display banner ads in Instant Articles, use the Ad element to designate the position for the ad within your article. The ad will be served from your designated URL and will be rendered inside the article with the "Sponsored" heading, indicating to the reader that the content is an advertisement.

Specify the dimensions of the iframe to match the dimensions of the ad asset within. Facebook will resize the frame to be responsive to different screen dimensions and add buffer space around the ad consistent with your article style.

<figure class="op-ad">
    <!-- Use this for your ads -->
    <iframe src="https://www.adserver.com/ss;adtype=banner320x50" height="50" width="320"></iframe>
</figure>

Serving

Ads can be served into your Instant Articles through your existing ad server implementation, including through Google's DFP solution.

Measurement

Since your ads are served into Instant Articles within an iframe and embedded web browser, you can employ your own existing techniques to measure and account for the viewability of these ads back to your advertisers. You may use Javascript to track and measure ad viewability for these ads in your Instant Articles.

Targeting

For ads sold directly by your team, you will not have access to Facebook targeting within Instant Articles. You may still use your standard cookie or contextual data for targeting as you do for ads on your website.

Using Facebook's Audience Network

In addition to serving ads that have been sold directly by your team, you can also incorporate ads fromAudience Network into your Instant Articles. Audience Network enables you to show people the right ads by extending Facebook's people based targeting to your article and gives you access to over 2 million advertisers.

Step 1: Sign up for Audience Network

Please contact your LiveRail representative for onboarding to Audience Network.

Step 2: Embed Audience Network ads

Once you are connected to Audience Network, create a placement in the Audience Network UI.

To embed Audience Network ad tags in your article, use the op-ad Embed type. These ads are served within a webview when a person reading your article taps on them.

In the following example, you would simply replace PLACEMENTID with the placement ID you generated from the Audience Network dashboard.

300x250 Audience Network Ad Sample

<figure class="op-ad">
    <iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/adnw_request?placement=PLACEMENTID&amp;adtype=banner300x250" width="300" height="250" style="border:0;margin:0;"></iframe>

</figure>

320x50 Audience Network Ad Sample

<figure class="op-ad">
    <iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/adnw_request?placement=PLACEMENTID&amp;adtype=banner320x50" width="320" height="50" style="border:0;margin:0;"></iframe>

</figure>

Facebook Instant Articles Will Rank Higher Than Standard Links

Will Facebook favor Facebook Instant Articles over standard links in News Feed ranking? This is Facebook’s official answer:

“No. Instant Articles are ranked in News Feed by the same criteria that we use to rank standard articles on the mobile web. News Feed ranks stories based on a number of factors, including the amount people interact with them and how much time people spend reading them.”— Facebook Instant Articles Team

This is actually somewhat of a misleading answer. Facebook Instant Articles and standard links are ranked by “the same criteria”, but what’s not mentioned is that Instant Articles inherently possess huge advantages within this “same criteria”.

This “same criteria” involves several major factors including load times, engagements, and shares. The New York Times, for example, said their Instant Articles are being shared more than standard links they post to Facebook so far, in part because it loads faster on phones.

“That’s not really surprising. We’ve learned in mobile that performance matters,” — Kinsey Wilson, ‎editor for innovation and strategy at the New York Times.

Number of shares is one of the signals Facebook’s algorithm uses to rank stories in users’ news feeds, alongside other factors such as time spent with a piece of content. That means Instant Articles may soon receive greater exposure across Facebook’s service than standard links to other websites.

Publishers and marketers have experienced a similar dynamic with video on Facebook. Over time, Facebook’s algorithm began to favor content uploaded directly to its service over YouTube videos, for example. A similar scenario might play out with Instant Articles.

The same can be said of the Google AMP Project, which is Google’s response to Facebook Instant Articles. Pages optimized for Google AMP load significantly faster, and Google has been using load times as an SEO ranking algorithm since 2010:

“Today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.”
— Google Webmaster Central, April 9, 2010

The Google AMP team also gave us a sneak preview of exactly how much faster AMP HTML pages are expected to be:

“So, how fast is AMP HTML? Pretty fast. In a sample of pages our early partners created we are seeing performance improvements measured through Speed Index between 15% and 85%.”— Google AMP Team 

So there you have it. On a technical level, it certainly seems that Facebook Instant Articles will be favored in News Feed ranking while Google AMP pages will be favored in SEO ranking. On a business level, it certainly makes sense for things to be that way as well. These companies may not openly admit to it, but these trends are heavily implied.

Facebook Instant Articles vs Google AMP Project, Welcome to World War Web

Maybe you’ve heard of Facebook Instant Articles. Maybe you’ve even heard of the Google AMP Project. So what’s it all about?

Ever since this internet thing became popular, publishers have been struggling to adapt. We moved from print to digital and many publishers never survived the shift. Now we’re witnessing yet another shift; this time from desktop to mobile.

Fundamental difference between desktop and mobile

There was once a time when we were willing to wait 5 minutes for our dial-up modem to establish a connection. Once upon a time when we were willing to sit around and wait 30 seconds for a page to load, because it was all just so magical and so worth waiting for. That was the past and times have changed.

While browsing at home on a desktop computer, you may be sitting comfortable in a chair, browsing the web in search for information. With mobile, people are always on the go. They’re on busses, in tunnels, elevators, shopping malls, or jay walking across a busy street.

Mobile users can’t deal with the load times. They don’t have time to close your pop-ups and they don’t care about your fancy nav-bar that links to a dozen other pages. Mobile users are purpose-driven. They click on an article because the title promised something, and this promise needs to be delivered as quickly as possible.

The publishing industry will either die or evolve

The publishing industry relies on advertising for revenue. It has been this way since the beginning of time. Content is made free to consume, and advertisers pay for it to capture your eyeballs. Advertising is made available through inventory, which essentially comes down to page real estate.

With the rapid shift to mobile browsing, publishers suddenly lost a majority of available screen space. Less inventory means less revenue, but the costs of content creation remains unchanged.

Publishers that try to cram too many ad units on a mobile screen will quickly see the impact on engagement. People don’t have the time or attention to deal with flashy ads and pop-ups, especially not on mobile. It is so easy to hop from one article to another on mobile, and readers certainly will if the experience is unpleasant.

New devices demand new formats and new practices

Content consumption on mobile is all about speed and focus. Content needs to get to the point as quickly as possible, without distraction. Companies like Facebook and Google have tremendous data around mobile users and have already been building new content formats for publishers to embrace.

These new formats are designed to be content-focused and load times configured to be 10x faster than the traditional mobile web.

Facebook Instant Articles vs Google AMP Project

Facebook launched the first missile, igniting World War Web, with the announcement of Instant Articles:

Rather than loading an article using a web browser, which takes over 8 seconds on average, Instant Articles load using the same fast tools we use to load photos and videos in the Facebook app allowing articles to load as much as 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles.

Beyond just speed, Instant Articles allow publishers to provide the same high quality, fluid experience and interactivity that people expect from a mobile app. Instant Articles has been designed with extensive feedback from news publishers. Publishers can serve their own ads and keep that revenue, track readership in real-time and with comScore, and customize the presentation of articles to match their brand.

This is Facebook’s response to the mobile shift. By delivering content directly within the app and not relying on a mobile browser, Facebook can deliver load times 10x faster than before. By imposing customization restrictions on the Instant Articles format, such as no navigation and javascript objects, Facebook can maximize content engagement on within its app.

This is where Google gets worried. If Facebook controls content, then they also control the ads. Google is, above all, an ad company. In retaliation, Google launches the AMP Project.

The Accelerated Mobile Pages (“AMP”) Project is an open source initiative that came out of discussions between publishers and technology companies about the need to improve the entire mobile content ecosystem for everyone — publishers, consumer platforms, creators, and users.

Today, the expectation is that content should load super fast and be easy to explore. The reality is that content can take several seconds to load, or, because the user abandons the slow page, never fully loads at all. Accelerated Mobile Pages are web pages designed to load instantaneously — they are a step towards a better mobile web for all.

Just like what you’d expect in a World War, alliances are being made and territories drawn. Google naturally partnered with Twitter and LinkedIn, two social networks that certainly won’t benefit from Facebook taking over the future of mobile web. It has been announced that Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest will all support the new Google AMP content format.

However, Facebook seems to be leading the way in terms of actual publisher adoption, including:

Billboard, Billy Penn, The Blaze, Bleacher Report, Breitbart, Brit + Co, Business Insider, Bustle, CBS News, CBS Sports, CNET, Complex, Country Living, Cracked, Daily Dot, E! News, Elite Daily, Entertainment Weekly, Gannett, Good Housekeeping, Fox Sports, Harper’s Bazaar, Hollywood Life, Hollywood Reporter, IJ Review, Little Things, Mashable, Mental Floss, mindbodygreen, MLB, MoviePilot, NBA, NY Post, The Onion, Opposing Views, People, Pop Sugar, Rare, Refinery 29, Rolling Stone, Seventeen, TIME, Uproxx, US Magazine, USA Today, Variety, The Verge, The Weather Channel.

Of course, Apple joins the fray with its own Apple News format, but the specifications for Apple News are still relatively unknown.

How will this World War Web affect content publishers?

Competition in this space is good. If Facebook Instant Articles was the only option, then they would hold way too much power. Any single platform having too much control will always be bad for publishers. Retaliation from Google forces Facebook to remain reasonable and competitive with revenue sharing and other offers. The participation of Apple in the war will provide even more options for publishers.

Last but not least, publishers don’t actually have to choose between these options. More likely than not, publishers will end up embracing multiple, if not all of these formats. These are responsive formats, meaning you don’t have to actually publish original content on each of these platforms. It simply means that your articles will load differently depending on where it’s accessed.

You would publish your article the same way you always do, on your website. Except when accessed on Facebook, it would trigger the Facebook Instant Article version of your article; when accessed on Twitter, it would trigger the Google AMP version; likewise with Apple News and so forth.

These new formats are creating possibilities for new methods of engagement, new forms of advertising, and new opportunities for publishers to grow and evolve.

How to Format a Facebook Instant Article

Facebook Instant Articles are created with HTML5, so specifying page elements is done in a way that’s similar to standard web publishing. In many cases, publishers can reuse code created for their web-based articles to generate versions that work as Instant Articles.

1. Required Article Elements

Every Instant Articles requires some basic information to specify how the article should be presented to readers. This metadata is defined in the <head> of the HTML document, and it includes information such as the canonical URL (which ties the Instant Article back to its web-based counterpart) and the specific style that should be applied to the content.

A canonical link is required in the <head> of every Instant Article, and this must be an absolute URL. If this URL is not present, Facebook will display the canonical link defined for the <item> in your RSS feed. If a canonical link is not provided in either the article’s <head>or in the RSS feed, Facebook will ignore the article.

<head>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta property="op:markup_version" content="v1.0">

  <!-- The URL of the web version of your article --> 
  <link rel="canonical" href="http://example.com/article.html">

  <!-- The style to be used for this article --> 
  <meta property="fb:article_style" content="myarticlestyle">
</head>

For additional detail on how to set up article-level configurations of your Instant Article, refer to theInstant Articles Format Reference.

2. Specifying The Article Cover

When readers first open an Instant Article, they see an article “cover” which acts as a visual header for the body content. The cover of each Instant Article is specified by the elements in the <header> section of the <article> block, which lives in the <body> of the HTML document. These elements include:

• Media type: Image, Video or Slideshow
• Title
• Subtitle
• Author(s)
• Kicker
• Published Time
• Modified Time

<body>
  <article>
    <header>
      <!-- The cover image shown inside your article --> 
      <figure>
        <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img.jpg" />
        <figcaption>This image is amazing</figcaption>
      </figure>

      <!-- The title and subtitle shown in your article -->
      <h1> Title </h1>
      <h2> Subtitle </h2>

      <!-- A kicker for your article -->
      <details>
        <summary>Kicker</summary>
        This is a kicker
      </details>

      <!-- The author of your article -->
      <address>
        <a rel="facebook" href="http://facebook.com/brandon.diamond">Brandon Diamond</a>
        Brandon is a avid zombie hunter.
      </address>

      <!-- The published and last modified time stamps -->
      <time class="op-published" dateTime="2014-12-11T04:44:16Z">December 11th, 4:44 PM</time>
      <time class="op-modified" dateTime="2014-12-11T04:44:16Z">December 11th, 4:44 PM</time>
    </header>
  </article>
</body>

For additional detail on how to configure the cover of an Instant Article, refer to the Instant Articles Format Reference.

3. Body Content Formatting

The standard HTML elements that define the body elements of your web-based articles also define the corresponding elements for the Instant Article version. Body text in your article is defined using <p>tags, while image and video content is defined using <figure> elements.

<body>
  <article>
    <!-- Body text for your article -->
    <p> This is some Instant Article content. </p> 

    <!-- A video within your article -->
    <figure>
      <video>
        <source src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/video.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
      </video>
    </figure>

    <!-- An image within your article -->
    <figure>
      <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img.jpg" />
      <figcaption>This image is amazing</figcaption>
    </figure>

  </article>
</body>

4. Creating Rich-Media Elements

In addition to standard article body text, Instant Articles also provide support for rich media elements, such as likes and comments on media, audio captions, and interactive maps. These elements are implemented with simple HTML5, and they are implemented natively within Instant Articles to provide a crisp reader experience. Special elements include:

• Slideshows
• Audio Captions
• Interactive Maps
• Geotagged Media
• Likes and Comments on Media
  

<body>
  <article>
    <!-- A slideshow within your article -->
    <figure class="op-slideshow">
      <figure>
        <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img1.jpg" />
      </figure>
      <figure>
        <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img2.jpg" />
      </figure>
      <figure>
        <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img3.jpg" />
      </figure>
    </figure>

    <!-- An audio caption on an image -->
    <figure>
      <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img.jpg">
      <audio title="audio title">
        <source src="http://foo.com/mp3">
      </audio>
    </figure>

    <!-- A map within your article -->
    <figure class="op-map">
      <script type="application/json" class="op-geotag">  
        {
          "type": "Feature",
          "geometry": 
            {
              "type": "Point",
              "coordinates": [ [23.166667, 89.216667], [23.166667, 89.216667] ]    
            },    
          "properties": 
            {      
              "title": "Jessore, Bangladesh",      
              "radius": 750000,      
              "pivot": true,      
              "style": "satellite",
            }
        }  
      </script>
    </figure>

    <!-- A geotagged image -->
    <figure>
      <img src="http://mydomain.com/path/to/img.jpg" />
      <script type="application/json" class="op-geotag">  
        {
          "type": "Feature",    
          "geometry":
            {      
              "type": "Point",
              "coordinates": [ [23.166667, 89.216667], [23.166667, 89.216667] ] 
            },    
          "properties":
            {
              "title": "Jessore, Bangladesh",
              "radius": 750000,
              "pivot": true,
              "style": "satellite",
            }  
        } 
      </script>
    </figure>

    <!-- An image with likes and comments enabled-->
    <figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments">
      <img src="http://foo.com/1.jpg"/>
      <figcaption>Image caption</figcaption>
    </figure>

  </article>
</body>

5. Adding Embedded Media

You can embed external media directly within your Instant Article. External media may include interactive graphics from your website, content from social networks or advertisements. Embedded content is defined using the standard HTML5 <figure>element, with specific classes provided for different types of content, as shown here:

<body>
  <article>
    <!-- An interactive graphic -->
    <figure class="op-interactive">
      <iframe class="no-margin" src="http://example.com/custom-interactive" height="60"></iframe>
    </figure>

    <!-- A post from Instagram -->
    <figure class="op-social">
      <iframe>
        <!-- Include Instagram embed code here -->
      </iframe>
    </figure>

    <!-- An advertisement -->
    <figure class="op-ad">
      <iframe src="https://www.adserver.com/ss;adtype=banner320x50" height="60" width="320"></iframe>
    </figure>

  </article>
</body>

6. Configuring A News Feed Preview

When a reader encounters your Instant Article in Facebook’s News Feed, they are shown a preview of the article (in much the same way article previews are shown in News Feed for the web version of articles). By default, the News Feed preview for an Instant Article displays with the same title, description, and image as the web-based version of your article.

This information is defined using the Open Graph meta tags located in the <head> of the web version of your article. This information is not defined directly in the markup for the Instant Articles version of the article. It must exist in the web version of your article.

<head>
  <meta property="og:title" content="Article title">
  <meta property="og:description" content="Article description">
  <meta property="og:image" content="http://myserver.com/image.jpg">
</head>

You can choose to replace the default News Feed preview image with a video that’s included as part of your Instant Article. To do this, add the fb-feed-cover class to anyVideo <figure> within the article’s <body>. The title and description for the preview will still match the preview for your web-based article, and they will be taken from the Open Graph meta tags defined on the web version of your article.

<body>
  <figure class="fb-feed-cover">
    <video autoplay>
      <!-- Media element to be shown in the News Feed preview -->
      <source src="http://example.com/NFVideo.mp4" type="video/mpeg" />
    </video>
  </figure>
</body>

Facebook Instant Articles, for Dummies

More people read news on mobile devices than ever before. More people read news on Facebook than ever before. Now Facebook has taken a big step towards solving some of the biggest challenges in publishing.

What’s wrong with publishing?

People have far less patience on mobile than they do on web. Not to mention, articles take far longer to load on mobile than on web. This is a recipe for disaster. People leave before the page loads, pages get less views, less advertising revenue, and the publishing business suffers.

With the release of iOS9, iPhones can now install “content blockers” (a.k.a. Ad Blockers). Ad Blockers are tools that (you guessed it) block ads. Most articles are available for free, but they’re not free to produce. Ad revenue sustains the publishing business. Ad Blockers kill the publishing business. Ad Blockers on web was troublesome enough, but now with Ad Blockers on mobile, the looming threat grows.

What’s Facebook’s solution?

They call it Instant Articles. Instead of loading articles through an in-app mobile browser, Facebook loads the articles in the app itself. Instead of fetching the article through a browser, Facebook caches the content and loads articles directly in-app. It all happens inside the app without any browsers. This means significantly faster load times; some may even say “instant”.

Faster load times lead to lower bounce rates, more engagements, and of course, more ad revenue. What about Ad Blockers? Well this solves that too. Mobile content blockers only work with mobile browsers. Since Facebook Instant Articles load inside the app without a browser, you can’t block ads.

Should I start publishing Instant Articles?

First things first, you keep 100% of your own ad revenue. Facebook displays your ads, and you keep the money. Of course, Facebook encourages you to use their ad network to fill any unsold inventory, but it’s not mandatory.

You’ll also have to be comfortable with giving up a bit of control. Instant Articles offer limited customization options. This means no nav bars and no pop ups. Be prepared to give up everything but the content. Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since most of that other stuff is what makes mobile web annoying.

What if I choose not to join?

Your articles will continue to load in a mobile browser, your ads would continue to be blocked by mobile content blockers, and your load time will probably be significantly slower than Instant Articles.

The larger implication is that your articles may lose visibility. Facebook News Feed has a ranking algorithm (kind of like Facebook SEO) that determines the visibility of your content. If your articles load slower than others and get less engagements, then they’re less likely to appear.

How can I publish Instant Articles?

Facebook is currently cherry picking publishers to work with. You can express your interests in becoming an Instant Articles publisher by filling out this form, but that’s about it.

The program is expected to eventually go public, but you don’t have to wait until then to take action. Facebook has already released documentations around how you can optimize your content for Instant Articles.

Go get a head start! Optimize your content for Instant Articles now so that when the program goes public, you’ll be ahead of the game.

How to Publish for Facebook Instant Articles

Automated Publishing

To provide a reliable Facebook Instant Articles experience when readers tap links to your articles on Facebook, an Instant Article version of each article must be created whenever a new article URL is published to your website.

Instant Articles support syndication using a secure RSS feed. This feed can integrate seamlessly with your existing workflow if new stories are automatically syndicated as Instant Articles whenever you publish them from your regular content management system.

You should only publish new stories via your Instant Articles RSS feed when they are also publicly available on your website. The Instant Articles system requires access to each article’s standard web URL to render the content properly.

Detailed guidance on Instant Articles markup conventions is provided in the Instant Articles Format Reference. Here’s how to begin automated publishing:

1. Create an RSS feed

To enable automated publishing of your Instant Articles, configure your content management system to generate an RSS feed which contains the full content of each article in Instant Articles markup.

Each article in this RSS feed must be represented as an <item> and should include a set of elements that contain the article content and all relevant metadata. While not all elements are required, it’s best to include the entire set of elements to provide as much context to your Instant Articles as possible.

Element	Description	Required
<title>	The headline of the article.	Yes
<link>	The canonical URL for this article on your site.	Yes
<content:encoded>	The full content of your article, in HTML form. Remember to escape all HTML content by wrapping it within a CDATA section.	Yes
<guid>	A string that provides a unique identifier for this article in your feed.
<description>	A summary of your article, in plain text form.
<pubDate>	The date of the article’s publication, in ISO-8601 format.
<author>	Name of the person who wrote the article. Use multiple<author> elements for multiple authors.

2. Connect the RSS feed to your Facebook Page

Specify the RSS feed that will distribute your content to Facebook through the Admin settings for your Facebook Page. From the top of your Page, click Settings, then select Instant Articles from the menu on the left of the screen.

Though optional, we suggest configuring basic authentication (username and password) for your RSS feed and serving it with SSL/TLS (i.e. via HTTPS) if you want your feed to be private.

You can specify a username and password for your feed on the Settings page. Facebook will encrypt and store these internally for use when publishing your content.

You can configure your RSS feed to automatically provide readers on Instant Articles-enabled devices with the content in Instant Article form. Use the auto-publish checkbox to turn this feature on or off. When auto-publish is disabled (unchecked), all new articles received from your RSS feed are stored as unpublished drafts until you manually publish them through your Page admin dashboard.

3. Verify your feed is being ingested properly

Once you’ve connected your RSS feed to your Facebook Page, Facebook will pull stories from your RSS feed into the Instant Articles system. If any errors are found in your RSS feed, they will be displayed on the RSS configuration screen in the settings for your Facebook Page. RSS feed errors must be resolved before proceeding.

If no RSS feed errors are reported, ensure that your articles are populating the Instant Articles library for your Facebook Page. From the top of your Page, click Publishing Toolsand then select Instant Articles from the menu on the left of the screen. The Instant Articles library looks like this:

4. Updating published articles

At times you may need to update the content of a previously published article, as in the case of a developing news story. To automatically specify an article that should be updated and republished, its HTML must include the op-published and op-modified <time>elements, and the updated article must be redistributed via your RSS feed.

Facebook pulls your RSS feed every three minutes to determine if any of your Instant Articles content needs to be refreshed. An article will be updated and republished if the op-modified date in article in the RSS feed is more recent than the op-modified date on the existing article in your library.

There are a few limitations to be aware of when it comes to updating articles that have been previously published:

• Facebook only pulls a maximum of 100 items that are new or modified since the last pull. If you are adding or changing more than 100 items every three minutes, the Instant Articles system will only update the first 100 items, sorted by modified time, with the most recent appearing first.
• If an update to an existing Instant Article is more than 24 hours old based on its op-modifiedtime, it will be ignored by the pull. For example, if your feed is pulled at 12:00pm on October 8th and an article in your feed with the op-modified time set to 11:59am on October 7th, it will be ignored.
  

If you attempt to update an existing article through your RSS feed and the update is ignored, Facebook will continue to display the most recent version of the article in the Instant Articles system. Changes to published Instant Articles that are more than one day old can be implemented manually, via the web-based Instant Articles editor tool accessible from your Facebook Page.

Media assets associated with an RSS item will only update if the URL of the media asset has changed.

5. Ensure Facebook Crawler can reach your content

To properly distribute your content to Instant Articles, ensure your content is visible to our crawler. If you normally restrict access to your content, you’ll need to whitelist our crawler. Please refer to ourFacebook Crawler guide for advice on how to identify our crawler and preferred approaches to whitelisting.

Sample RSS feed

This is an example of an RSS 2.0 feed optimized for Instant Articles:

<rss version="2.0"
     xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/">
  <channel>
    <title>News Publisher</title>
    <link>http://www.example.com/</link>
    <description>
        Read our awesome news, every day.    
    </description>
    <language>en-us</language>
    <lastBuildDate>2014-12-11T04:44:16Z</lastBuildDate>
    <item>
      <title>This is an Instant Article</title>
      <link>http://www.example.com/human-friendly-article-link</link>
      <guid>2fd4e1c67a2d28fced849ee1bb76e7391b93eb12</guid>
      <pubDate>2014-12-11T04:44:16Z</pubDate>
      <author>Mr. Author</author>
      <description>This is my first Instant Article. How awesome is this?</description>
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[
        (The full content of your article, in HTML form.)
      ]]></content:encoded>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>