Apple has already dominated the personal tech niche, providing superior products for phones, mp3 players, and personal computers, among others.
Now it is entering the publishing game.
Well, sort of.
Apple has always had a news app on its iPhone, but it has opened up the option for publishers of all kinds to submit their content for distribution on the app. You can publish on Apple News if you are a national newspaper chain or if you are a small-time blogger. The only requirements are that you format the content correctly.
Here’s what you need to know about the Apple news format, including how to use it and how it can benefit your brand:
Getting Started
Before you can start publishing on Apple News, you will need to have a channel.
Setting up a channel is free, and all you need for it is an Apple ID. You’ll be asked for some information about yourself and your channel, and then you’ll submit your application to publish on Apple News.
In the meantime, you’ll be able to add RSS feeds to your channel by editing your account settings.
You can also create separate sections to your channel, which is useful if you have multiple websites that you intend to promote through the app. You won’t have to create a new channel for each of them.
Publishing
Apple provides News Publisher to make it easy for you to distribute your content on the channel.
You don’t have to learn the special JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) coding language to format the content yourself. Instead, you’ll use the easy dashboard that Apple provides to create your content, including interactive elements like photos and video.
Still, there might be a bit of a learning curve as you get used to using this dashboard. Apple provides plenty of support, including a help desk and numerous informational articles and FAQs about the process.
What’s Included
Apple allows you to include numerous components in your article.
Text elements like headlines, bylines, and captions are all included, of course. Then you can add images, including galleries, logos, illustrations, embedded Instagram posts, scalable images, images of tweets, and more.
Dynamic content can also be included, such as video, music, and interactive elements like maps.
Other graphics like pull quotes, section dividers, figures, and containers can also be added to the article.
Animations can also be added to specific components, such as making a headline flash or a photo fade out.
You can also control what happens in the background, whether you are using a static picture or some animation.
You have support to add just about any items to your articles that you would on your own site. That gives you full control of how the information is presented to the reader and what kind of user experience you offer. You do not have to give up your freedom to use the platform the way you do with the Google or Facebook publishing platforms.
Advertising
Apple allows you to include advertising with your News content, but you must use iAd to do it.
You have the option to sell your own ads with iAd, and you will earn 100 percent of the revenue. However, if you would like iAd to sell ads on your behalf, you will earn only 70 percent of the revenue.
Whichever option you choose, you will be able to control your ad campaigns through the iAd dashboard, including how those ads are targeted. You’ll also get plenty of analytics data to ensure that you are making the best decisions to get the results you want from your advertising.
You will be able to display banner, video and native ads to meet your goals. You cannot monetize your RSS feed.
In order to use iAd, you will have to sign up for a developer account.
Other Publishing Opportunities
To maximize your revenue possibilities, you need to be publishing your content on as many channels as possible. Google’s AMP and Facebook’s instant articles provide some exciting possibilities.
Use CodeFuel’s advertising platform to discover the best places to insert ads in your content and across all your channels. Our intuitive system relies on comprehensive analytics information to get the right placement, and it makes predictions about customer behavior to know when and where to place ads.
By using our advertising platform, you’ll quickly begin reaching and even surpassing your advertising revenue goals.
The development of new publishing platforms has not only ushered in new opportunities for monetization but also for brand promotion. You should be developing strategies for distributing content on all of these channels to get as much exposure for your brand as possible and to funnel that into increased traffic and ad revenue.
If you aren’t already on Apple News, now is the time to sign up for a channel and start creating that content.
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