Come Q2 2016, Facebook will allow brands to advertise on Messenger. Although the source has been kept anonymous, the details were found in a document that Facebook sent to its advertisers. Brands will now be able to market ads over messenger but it wont be possible for them to do so unless a person has contacted them on messenger first. It is in line with this rule that the document additionally urges brands and businesses to engage in conversation with their consumers now, so they are able to pipe ads to them in the future.
Facebook announced its ‘Businesses On Messenger’ feature earlier in 2015 which allowed e-Commerce businesses to raise tickets and provide customer service over chat to its consumers. In a matter of months, the company also allowed these e-Commerce brands to add links like ‘Contact Us’ or ‘Send Message’ on their pages.
Although statements made from officials in the past are contradictory to advertising, the company has greatly limited a brand’s or business’ reach to its customers by allowing the customer to choose to make the first move. With approximately 800 million users on their messenger application, Facebook has begun to monetize through advertising on Messenger only recently.
The document from Facebook mentions that if a business is able to provide a 90% response rate within a period of 24 hours, and maintain this weekly, their messenger chat handle will actively become searchable on Facebook.
According to David Marcus, ‘Head of Messenger’, Messenger is aimed at replacing the traditional toll-free contact center that until now required you to pay close attention to the IVR options and feed appropriate responses over DTMF for the required assistance, not to mention the long hold periods whilst on the call.
You only looked for messages from your friends on messenger before; now you’ll probably need to take a closer look.