As Apple News Format opens to all publishers, Apple launches ad campaign for News app

iOS 9 News iPhone iPad teaser 001

The native Apple News Format is now open to all independent publishers of all sizes as Apple has kicked off a brand new advertising campaign meant to persuade more people to use iOS 9’s News app, Vanity Fair reported yesterday. Currently, the News app, which is basically an aggregator, has about forty million readers.

Last September’s iOS 9 release brought out the News app with support from more than a hundred major publishers as launch partners.

Now everyone, bloggers included, can take advantage of the rich-media Apple News Format to deliver their content to iOS users in immersive ways, with interactive graphics, video, auto-resizing layouts, crisp typography and smooth animations.

Everyone is invited

Before today, anyone with an RSS feed could become a News publisher, but only the biggest publishers were permitted to use the immersive Apple News Format.

The company has added new editing tools to make it easier for smaller publishers to create content in the Apple News Format and introduced an analytics dashboard that gives publishers more data about the way their articles are performing.

Sadly, existing publishers will have to decide whether they would like to continue presenting News content as plain RSS feeds—lacking all the bells and whistles of the native News format—or switch to authoring content in the Apple News Format.

There’s no way to use both at the same time.

News app campaign

To promote News as a one-stop shop for users’ daily news consumption, Apple has kicked off a brand new advertising campaign focused specifically on iOS 9’s News app.

Apple News ad campaign image 001

New billboards for News can be seen in San Francisco, Chicago or New York, in addition to online ads promoting the app. Ads seem to highlight News content from premium publishers, with the tagline “All the news you want. All in one place.”

Apple is also promoting the News service on its own devices via search queries.

Monetizing News

Participating publishers can keep 100 percent of the revenue from ads they sell, or 70 percent if they opt to have Apple’s iAd platform sell ads for them.

Apple’s document titled “Ad Specifications for iAd” highlights ad formats content creators and publishers can deploy in the Apple News Format: Standard Banner, Medium Rectangular Banner, Double Banner, Large Banner, Interstitial Banner, Pre-Roll Video and Native Banner.

Apple News native ad format image 003

Native ads appear inline in content feeds and are distinguished from regular articles with a ”Sponsored” label.

Media rich content, served in one place

With the Apple News Format, publishers can author once and the News app will optimize their content for all iOS devices.

“It’s easy to connect to existing content management systems, and you get access to a rich suite of tools to measure user engagement with your content,” reads an excerpt from the Apple News for Developers webpage.

Anyone from major news organizations to magazines, blogs and more can now sign up to deliver their content in News by submitting their RSS feeds to Apple.

The Apple News Format documentation is available on Apple’s website.

The News app is currently available only in the United States.

RELATED: How to enable Apple’s News app outside US

Apple has not said yet when News will roll out internationally, but I sincerely hope that this app will come to the Mac sooner than later.

Source: Vanity Fair, Re/code