While everyone is unhappy about Facebook and its ads, the company seems to be going full tilt at introducing more and more ads. With shopping links coming to Instagram Stories, they have become all but ads, and now Facebook is adding autoplaying video ads in Messenger too.
According to Recode, users will start to see autoplay video ads right in their inbox next to all their messages. The big concern here is that private messages and ads don’t always mix well as they can feel creepy and you might feel like every message is being watched – which is the case anyway.
Even though Messenger has ads for more than a year now, Facebook is trying to boost its ad revenue from the app with video ads which are obviously going to cost advertisers more.
Stefanos Loukakos, Messenger’s ad business head, told Recode Facebook will monitor your behavior to determine if these ads are simply not hitting the spot or making you feel uneasy. “Top priority for us is user experience. So we don’t know yet [if these will work]. However, signs until now, when we tested basic ads, didn’t show any changes with how people used the platform or how many messages they send,” he is reported to have said at the Cannes Lions ad fest this week.
One does wonder how long before WhatsApp starts getting ads. Facebook has said it’s running out of spaces for advertisers and with the departure of both privacy-conscious WhatsApp founders from Facebook, it becomes all the more easy for the company to bring ads into WhatsApp, starting with WhatsApp Business.
