Skip to main content

Facebook Plans To Put Ads In Messenger

Image
By

A leaked document Facebook sent to some of its biggest advertisers reveals that Facebook will launch ads within Messenger in Q2 2016.
The document also notes that Facebook has quietly launched a URL short link fb.com/msg/ that instantly opens a chat thread with a business. Facebook confirmed the existence of the URL short link. That seems to back up the validity of the leaked document.
Facebook Business Messages
An example of messages between businesses and users
Regarding Messenger ads specifically, Facebook told me “We don’t comment on rumor or speculation. That said, our aim with Messenger is to create a high quality, engaging experience for 800 million people around the world, and that includes ensuring people do not experience unwanted messages of any type.” That last part sounds like Facebook trying to reassure users that even when there are ads, they won’t be completely unsolicited, and it’s going to be very careful.
Messenger is one of Facebook’s most popular and fastest-growing products, with 800 million monthly active users. Yet the social network has never monetized it directly before.
Thankfully for users, Facebook isn’t going to let brands send ad messages to just anyone or even people who’ve liked their Pages. Only those who have voluntarily chatted with a business can be sent ads. This should somewhat limit the spam potential and annoyance. Right now, almost all messages come from one’s friends, so Facebook will likely try to preserve this high signal-to-noise ratio with limits on advertising.
The news somewhat contradicts what Mark Zuckerberg said to calm users of WhatsApp when Facebook acquired it in early 2014. “I don’t personally think ads are the right way to monetize messaging,” Zuckerberg said on an analyst call. WhatsApp’s CEO Jan Koum went further in a 2012 blog post, stating that “Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought,” but also a waste of engineering resources.
Yet as more content from friends, news publishers, video makers and brands compete for limited space in people’s News Feeds, Facebook has apparently grown willing to let advertisers pay to ping people directly. It’s not the only one opening new direct channels between the two. Twitter today announced new ways for companies to offer customer service through DMs.

Replacing The 1-800 Number

davidmarcushorizontal
Facebook’s Head Of Messenger David Marcus
Facebook has been slowly enhancing the ways businesses can privately communicate with people since late 2011. That’s when it first began letting users send messages to Pages, which were only then allowed to message them back. Originally, this was designed to let businesses move messy or irate customer service conversations off their Wall where other fans could see.
Facebook redoubled its business chat efforts when it hired PayPal President David Marcus to run Messenger in 2014. He came with a vision that Facebook could do a better job of letting companies talk with customers than phones and 1-800 numbers with clumsy touch-tone menus and hold times.
At its F8 conference in March 2015, Facebook announced its Businesses On Messengerprogram that let e-commerce customers get receipts and chat with customer service reps to change orders. It also allowed businesses to integrate with third-party tools like Zendesk and Conversocial to manage their incoming messages.
screen-shot-2015-03-25-at-10-53-11-am
Over the following months, Facebook enhanced chat capabilities for businesses by letting them show a big “Send Message” or “Contact Us” button on their Page, create saved replies, show a badge that grades them on how fast they respond, and reply to wall posts with private messages.
Facebook also recently introduced “Click To Message” News Feed ads that let businesses pay to get people to chat with them. Plus, it’s been secretly testing a chat bot platform that allows developers to create e-commerce experiences and personal assistants within Messenger.

Facebook’s Most Forceful Ad Yet

Now Facebook is pushing brands to use these tools to encourage people to message them so they’ll eventually be able to send ads in return. According to the leaked document, it’s also recently released a new tool: the Messenger URL short link. It’s now live for all Pages, through the format fb.com/msg/ and then the Facebook Username of the Page, like fb.com/msg/excitingtechnology/.
Facebook Messenger URL Short LinkBrands can share and promote their link. When tapped by a user, it will start a conversation with the brand either in the Messenger app, or on Facebook’s mobile web or desktop site. Facebook confirmed to me that a few partners include Canadian telecom Rogers are already trying out the fb.com/msg/Rogers shortcode, but Facebook didn’t talk about it.
This short link is essentially the next-generation version of a 1-800 number. Instead of calling 1-800-FLOWERS, you’d be able to just click something like fb.com/msg/flowers and chat at your own pace with a customer service agent. No “Press 1 to hear a list of options.” No “Please hold.”
If businesses achieve a 90 percent response rate to messages within 24 hours over the past week, their Messenger handle will become searchable on Facebook, the document details. This could further stoke in-bound message threads that will eventually become opportunities to show ads.
It’s unclear exactly what businesses will be able to put in Messenger ads, but there are plenty of possibilities. The document says the ads are supposed to carry on the existing discussion users started. The ads could perhaps:
  • Inform customers about a flash sale, free gift or other promotion
  • Announce a product launch, and encourage foot traffic or provide a link to buy the item online
  • Deliver a new video, GIF or other piece of content created by the brand
  • Follow up with retargeting-style reminders that an item the user previously considered buying is no longer out of stock or has dropped in price
Facebook Business Message ThreadsConsidering this is the most direct and forceful way for businesses to advertise to or interact with potential customers, Facebook could likely charge steep rates.
There’s always a chance that early tests to Messenger ads receive negative feedback and the plan gets scuttled. The last thing Facebook wants to do is cram spam into Messenger and give people a reason to return to SMS or another chat platform. Expect these ads to be slowly and thoroughly tested before possibly being rolled out.
Right now pretty much every time Messenger buzzes, you know it’s one of your friends and is probably worth looking at. Facebook will have to aggressively thwart spam or misuse of Messenger ads to make money while keeping its chat app at the center of our mobile lives.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Google is using machine learning to teach robots how to grasp random objects

By
Using your hand to grasp a pen that’s lying on your desk doesn’t exactly feel like a chore, but for robots, that’s still a really hard thing to do. So to teach robots how to better grasp random objects, Google’s research team  dedicated 14 robots to the task . The standard way to solve this problem would be for the robot to survey the environment, create a plan for how to grasp the object, then execute on it. In the real world, though, lots of things can change between formulating that plan and executing on it. Google is now using these robots to train a deep  convolutional neural network  (a technique that’s all the rage in machine learning right now) to help its robots predict the outcome of their grasps based on the camera input and motor commands. It’s basically hand-eye coordination for robots. The team says that it took about 3,000 hours of practice (and 800,000 grasp attempts) before it saw “the beginnings of intelligent reacti...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sonatype Snares $30 Million Investment Led By Goldman Sachs

By
Sonatype , a company that helps customers create automated, policy-driven software component security, announced a $30 million round today led by Goldman Sachs. The investment was a mix of debt and equity financing and was handled by Goldman’s Principal Strategic Investments Group, rather than Goldman’s venture capital arm, Sonatype CEO Wayne Jackson explained. Although this may seem a subtle distinction, he says that Strategic Investments only makes investments in products that are central to the company’s mission (as the name implies), whereas the venture arm makes lots of different kinds of investments. Sonatype works to ensure that open source components used in much of Goldman’s (and just about every company’s) software are safe and up-to-date in an automated fashion. “Today, open source components underpin a vast majority of our most mission-critical applications at the firm. As we work to build, maintain and update these applications, w...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to Run Older Applications in Windows 10

By
You cannot expect all the vendors to upgrade their programs to make them compatible with Windows and neither would you want to purchase all the applications every time a new version of Windows is out. Nonetheless, the fact still remains the same that not all applications are compatible with the latest operating systems and there are times when many applications do not initialize when you upgrade your PC to a newer version of Windows. To make things easy for you, Windows 10 allows you to run the programs in compatibility mode. Running a program in compatibility mode makes the application think that it is installed on an older, compatible version of Windows, thus the software runs without any flaws. There are two ways you can run a program in compatibility mode: Program Compatibility Troubleshooter – This is a step-by-step wizard that allows you to pick a program that you prefer to use and configures it to run in compatibility mode. Compatibility Tab – This tab can...
Post a Comment
Read more

How ad-free subscriptions could solve Facebook

By
At the core of Facebook’s “well-being” problem is that its business is directly coupled with total time spent on its apps. The more hours you pass on the social network, the more ads you see and click, the more money it earns. That puts its plan to make using Facebook healthier at odds with its finances, restricting how far it’s willing to go to protect us from the harms of over use. The advertising-supported model comes with some big benefits, though. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly said that “We will always keep Facebook a free service for everyone.” Ads lets Facebook remain free for those who don’t want to pay, and more importantly, for those around the world who couldn’t afford to. Ads pay for Facebook to keep the lights on, research and develop new technologies, and profit handsomely in a way that attracts top talent and further investment. More affluent users with more buying power in markets like the US, UK, and Canada command higher ad prices, effectively...
1 comment
Read more

Here Are The First Connected Home Devices For Apple’s HomeKit

By
Apple’s HomeKit is finally starting to roll out to actual consumers, via the first crop of HomeKit-enabled accessories from third-party manufacturers. This means you’ll soon be able to get your hands on a range of products for the connected home that work with Siri on your iOS device, and that you’ll be able to do so as soon as today, since some of the new HomeKit accessories start shipping now. The accessories in question range from sensors, to lights, to thermostats, to smart outlets, and come from a group of accessory-makers with a trusted reputation in the connected home industry. HomeKit may have taken a while to arrive, but it’s doing so in grand fashion, with a practical lineup to get your home connected to your iOS ecosystem in an essential way. Elgato Eve The  Elgato Eve  is a set of connected wireless sensors that monitor key factors like indoor air quality, temperature, humidity as well as conditions outside, like temperature, humidity and air pre...
Post a Comment
Read more