When Ads get Facebook Messenger Personal

Brands are hoping to engage people with Ads to start conversations on Facebook Messenger, read on.

There's little doubt Facebook has led the charge when it comes to mobile advertising of late. After all, it's brought them unprecedented growth.

As Apple was to the smart phone, Facebook has been to digital and mobile advertising.

Facebook is inching closer to Google, while Snap and Amazon are showing some growth. #FacebookDMAds

The so-called duopoly of Facebook and Google to control the future of digital advertising is still, a work in progress.

Even if the Newspaper industry is seeking to rally industry teams together for a bid on antitrust exemption from Congress in an effort to negotiate collaboratively with Facebook and Google, it's a bit too little, too late.

The world changes too fast for legacy industries to keep up, never mind adapt.

With Ads appearing with increasing frequency on Instagram and with new kinds of Ads on Facebook; it was only a matter of time before Facebook Messenger became the new stomping ground for Ads.

That's right, your Facebook Messenger is about to be filled with Ads, big ones!

Is SMS the right place for Disruptive Native Ads?

Technically Email is on a slow decline, and with the advent of ad-blockers, Google and Facebook need to innovate. Recently this has meant tweaking metrics, improving proof of ROI via attribution and a wide range of tactics.

According to Tech Crunch, over the next month, Facebook will gradually roll out Messenger ads to all advertisers globally. 

The Copy, Spam and Pay to Play Era of Advertizing

In an era of stories copied by Instagram of Snapchat, Geo-filters and links arriving on Snapchat; Ads certainly are getting more, personal.

Whether Millennials or GenZ find them disruptive, annoying or useful will be interesting to watch.

Facebook gets about 85% of its ad revenue from mobile.

The Facebook trinity of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has a considerable global following, but when your main revenue stream is digital ads, at what point do you begin to alienate your user base with a lack of customer-centricity?

How Close is Too Close for Comfort?

This is a bit of a controversial move by the ubiquitous web Giant, as the next time you open Facebook Messenger to do intimate communications, whether contacting friends or family, you may find yourself scrolling through unwanted advertisements. 

The Ads won't be what people write in messages (oddly enough!), and instead use the same Facebook targeting, and measurement tools.

Facebook would love if this works out, since stories within Facebook Messenger itself were only received luke warmly, not at all as wildly popular as on Instagram in the last 9 months.

Monopolies Can be Bold

Takes full advantage of the personalized nature of messaging by driving people to a conversation after they interact with the ad in Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger - (Facebook's Pitch)

With digital ad spend up around $83 Billion, the duopoly is sitting pretty with Facebook’s ad revenue projected to jump 32.1 percent while advertisers’ spend with Google will increase 14.8 percent.

Facebook and Google are pretending they are such ubiquitous channels that the consumer doesn't care to be bombarded; ad-blockers have shown this simply isn't the case. So when do Ads get too personal and invasive?

If we really were ad-immune, why would brands shell out so much money for our briefest margins of attention?

When you are at the top, you can be a bit of a bully. Killing Snapchat was just the beginning, after pretty well forcing Facebook users to switch to a separate Messenger app to continue chatting, the social network is about to start pushing adverts on those using the function. It appears no channel is except from Ad-spam.

If all goes well and as planned, Facebook catches up to Google in mobile ad-revenue by about the year 2021.

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