Facebook Messenger is getting ads, according to a leaked document

By Kris Wouk Updated February 19, 2016

ads coming to facebook messenger holiday update 2

Early this year, Facebook announced that it had reached over 800 million active users for its Facebook Messenger platform. Until now, Facebook hasn’t attempted to monetize this user base, but it seems that could change in the near future.

A leaked document that Facebook had sent to advertising partners reveals that the company is planning on introducing a unique form of ads to Facebook Messenger, according to TechCrunch, which obtained a copy of the document. Instead of the standard banner-style ad seen in many apps, the ads here would be sent directly to customers who have previously chatted with the business being advertised.

As part of its preparations for the rollout, Facebook has introduced a shortlink that, when clicked, instantly opens a chat thread with a business. The company has confirmed the existence of this link, but as for the rest of the document, nothing has been made public at this time.

“We don’t comment on rumor or speculation,” a Facebook representative told TechCrunch. “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.”

The document recommends that in order to have a healthy base of users to send ads to, businesses do what they can to get customers chatting with them. If you start seeing links on a company’s website to chat with them on Facebook Messenger, this could likely be the reason.

According to the document, these new ads are coming to Facebook Messenger in the second quarter of this year. Since these ads are only sent to users who have already sent messages to a company, it seems that Facebook wants to make sure users aren’t annoyed by them. As for whether or not this will actually be the case, we’ll have to wait and see.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

Social Media

Reels are about to show up in yet another Facebook feature

A smartphone with the Facebook app icon on it all on a white marble background.

As its answer to TikTok, Reels is clearly a particularly important priority for Meta. Which is why a number of its platforms' recent feature updates often involve Reels. And today's announcement was not exempt from Meta's push to make Reels just as competitive as TikTok.

On Thursday, Meta announced that it would be bringing Reels to Facebook Groups, mentioning it as one of three new ways for users to "to connect over shared interests." Facebook group members and admins will be able to add "audio, text overlay and filters on top of their videos before sharing to bring their stories to life."

Social Media

What is a Facebook Pixel? Meta’s tracking tool, explained

Meta, formerly Facebook.

If you have a website for your business and you're wondering how well your ads are reaching prospective customers, you'll probably want to be able to measure that to make sure that the money you've spent on advertising for your business is money well spent. Meta (the parent company of social media platforms Facebook and Instagram) offers a tool that can measure that by capturing how your customers interact with your business' website.

At one point, this tool was known as a Facebook Pixel. But since the technology company's recent rebranding to Meta, the tool also underwent a name change and is now known as the Meta Pixel.

Mobile

Meta found over 400 mobile apps ‘designed to steal’ Facebook logins

Social media mobile apps on a smartphone screen, all on a textured gray fabric background.

If you frequently use your Facebook login to sign into new mobile apps you've installed, you may want to pay attention to Meta's latest announcement.

On Friday, Facebook's parent company Meta published a blog post written by its Director of Threat Disruption David Agranovich, and Ryan Victory, a Malware Discovery and Detection engineer at Meta. The post detailed Meta's discovery of over 400 mobile apps "that target people across the internet to steal their Facebook login information." Essentially, Meta found hundreds of mobile apps that were "designed to steal" the login information of Facebook users by having those users log in to these apps with their Facebook login information.