You'll soon be seeing a lot more ads on Facebook Messenger, as the company has confirmed that it's bringing home screen advertising in the app to all 1.2 billion users worldwide.
Facebook's Stan Chudnovsky said that its home screen ads - which it trialled in Australia and Thailand, apparently with some success - will be rolling out to countries across the globe in the coming weeks. The Messenger home screen is the 'primary' viewpoint for the app, showing your most recent chats with friends, bots and brands.
"[Advertising is] not necessarily everything, but it’s definitely how we’re going to be making money right now," Chudnovsky told VentureBeat. "And going forward, there are some other business models we are exploring as well, but they’re all around ads one way or another."
Companies will be able to link to destinations outside of Messenger through their ads, but Facebook will be encouraging advertisers to consider ways of keeping the user engaged within Messenger itself - for example, through the use of chat bots.
Ads in the Messenger home tab will be sold through an auction-based model, and will use the same type of targeting techniques employed by the likes of Facebook and Instagram. Users around the world should start seeing the new ads in Messenger by the end of the year.
Source: VentureBeat
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