What’s happened?
Google has released “AMP Stories”, a visually rich content format for delivering news and information to users. AMP Stories have been designed with mobile in mind, but will appear on desktop too.
Google worked with a handful of publishers, including CNN, Mashable and Conde Nast, to build a story-focused format in AMP, with the aim that this format will offer new, creative and visually rich ways of storytelling. Google joins Snap and Instagram by offering tap-through visual content stories.
AMP Stories will be a section of the Google search results page.
Show me, show me!
Publishers such as Microsoft, Wired and CNN have already launched AMP Stories. These stories can be found within the Google experience by navigating to g.co/ampstories and searching for the respective publisher’s name.
Example experience below:
How does this impact brands?
As per the first screenshot above, AMP Stories will take up real estate within the Google search results page. Brands will work with the AMP Stories publishers (CNN, in the above example) to run interstitial style units within their Stories content. Note, at present, this would be an advertising relationship between brands and the AMP Stories publisher (not Google).
Precision's thoughts
This easily digestible content format will gain readers' attention as quickly as possible (a point even called out in Google's own developer press release for AMP Stories). Google believes this format has so much potential, it is prepared to give it space within the most lucrative online real estate- its search results page.
We believe that Google will look to expand the AMP Stories' distribution across other Google channels, starting with users' Google feeds (the personalized information feed Google has been quietly building out- viewable in the Google app and by swiping right on a Pixel and Nexus Home Screen).