Facebook Messenger, is one of the most popular messaging applications around the globe right now; with its numerous features like GIFs, location sharing, voice and video chat etc. Any changes to it affect a lot of people, as 1.2 billion people are using it monthly.
In San Francisco, at Fort MasonIn, in a recent event, Messenger head of product Stan Chudnovsky has announced in front of a large crowd that Messenger will start adding ads to its application in the next month.
This is not a new development because beta testing of the ads feature was already underway in Australia and Thailand from January onwards.
These advertisements will be similar to those we see on Facebook and Instagram, where ‘sponsored content’ is visible between two posts. This does not seem to be much intrusive as it is compared to ads on other websites where some even pop up and redirect to another page.
Though there are advertisements present in the application, currently, they are limited to bot chats with firms that take orders or answer to users’ queries like fast food chains and others. Sponsored messages might be also sent to the user from companies with whom the user has been engaged in the past.
Facebook says, during an interview with Venture Beat,
“Although adverts aren’t a be-all-end-all source of revenue they are the primary source currently and are the backbone of our business model.”
Stan added that they will ‘start slow’ to introduce ads and it depends on the response of their users. He also did mention that data consumption rates will also be given high importance here.
