How do you feel about ads on top of your ads? What about advertisements embedded into your messages as “sponsored” messages?
If you’re a Facebook Messenger user, you may start seeing advertisements pop up in the middle of your conversations. The company wrote a blog post directed towards “brands” to learn how to embed this sort of feature. Sponsored messages won’t go out to all Facebook users, but if you’ve “liked” a page, you will likely start seeing interactive ads from those companies show up in your messages. This could be anything from a restaurant offering you a free drink during happy hour or a retailer slipping a discount coupon your way.
It looks like chatbots may be proliferated as an advertising medium, and it makes sense. After all, what better way to entice someone to spend money somewhere than to make them feel like the transaction is somewhat personal? It’s genius, but here’s to hoping that Facebook’s new advertising gimmick doesn’t turn into a headache for its users. Especially mobile users.