Facebook Announces Ads On Messenger Platform

Facebook and U.S. DollarIn what could be a potentially invasive new move to monetize its platform, Facebook announced this week that sponsored ad content will begin to appear in Facebook Messenger.

The ads, which will be targeted specifically to you, will appear on your Messenger home screen. If you click on one, the ad will redirect you to another site of the advertiser’s choosing. Of course, businesses can already send advertising messages to you if you’ve interacted with them before on the platform. But the site said users can expect to see these disruptive new Messenger home screen ads by the end of 2017.

Despite what users think about these ads, they’re clearly working — Facebook has pretty much said they represent the future of its revenue.

“[Advertising is] not necessarily everything, but it’s definitely how we’re going to be making money right now. And going forward, there are some other business models we are exploring as well, but they’re all around ads one way or another,” Facebook Messenger head of product Stan Chudnovsky told VentureBeat.

Thankfully, these ads won’t be able to use information from your private messages themselves to target you — but they’ll still share the same space. And those conversations aren’t necessarily the place you want to be sold something.