Is this the beginning of the end of Messenger being a mostly personal channel?
Quite a lot has changed in the world of Facebook Messenger over the past 18 months.
Last year they launched the Messenger platform, allowing businesses and developers to launch bots to enable automated communications and interactive conversations living right inside their Messenger accounts. They’ve iterated on the platform a LOT.
Back in January they started testing ads in Australia and Thailand. They’ve just announced they are going to begin rolling them out worldwide.
Has Messenger always been purely you and your friends? For me, no, it’s not, one of the things that Messenger has is a global directory of everyone on Messenger, you can search for anyone and send them a message. Want to send a message to your local Italian deli to find out if they have any of that delicious ham left? You can do that via Messenger. Want to send your friend’s friend a message to ask them if you left your jumper at their house when you went round the other day? You can do that via Messenger. I’ve friends that run a small ski holiday company (they’re great, go speak with them), and actually they take a lot of their bookings via Messenger, they don’t have a bot, they just do it manually (they are quite small).
It’s quite clear that Facebook are moving Messenger to more of a “global” messaging channel, not just a personal messaging channel.
In my eyes, one of the absolute key differences between WhatsApp and Messenger is that to speak with someone on WhatsApp you have to know their phone number, it’s much more personal. Do I give my phone number out to anyone that might want to get in touch with me? Nope.
Now that Messenger has over 1.2 Billion users, Facebook wants to work out how to monetise it, and can you blame them? They’ve been experimenting with a range of monetisation options. For example, did you know that you can send a promoted message to anyone that has got in touch with your company via Messenger? Well you can! Another thing you can do with Messenger is get people to opt-in to receive messages from your company or brand. One of the biggest concerns with this, is that it does mean that potentially you end up having to spend less on boosting posts, which isn’t necessarily in Facebook’s interests. However, content you post on Facebook, and content you send on Messenger are not only a completely different medium, but also have a completely different context.
One of the concerns some of our customers have is “how long will it last?”, will Facebook stop you from sending messages to your customers via Messenger? Now they are coming up with ways to monetise Messenger, it’s clear that this should no longer be a concern.
Now, back to the actual ads. I was fortunate enough to see them on a friends phone earlier this year when they were part of the earlier trials. I think the ads could be really interesting. There’s no denying that some ads are annoying, but some ads are actually super timely and relevant.
Facebook already has Messenger destination ads, pushing people to your account on Messenger where your bot lives. Well now, imagine if that ad wasn’t on Facebook, but instead it was right within Messenger. We all understand friction, and we want to make all experiences as frictionless as possible.
Maybe you’re a retailer, and you have a special offer on a specific product, perhaps you’ve got a discount on wine. Perhaps I’m using Messenger to organise a party with some friends. I go back to the inbox screen of Messenger, and there is an ad for WineSeller telling me that right now they have 20% off their wine selection. From there I can tap the ad, I get taken to the Messenger account, they have a bot. I can browse their wines, perhaps they have a bot that asks me questions about my preferences and suggests a wine to me. Then right there and then I can order the wine. Right within Messenger. I can then go back to the conversation with my friends to declare the success, and to tell them “I got this, we’re gonna have a good time…”.
Over the past 18 months we’ve been experimenting with Messenger bots for a range of customers including agencies, the BBC, sports teams, musicians, retailers and FMCG brands and honestly, I’m pretty excited about the possibilities. These things are pretty new, there are a lot of experiments going on, and a lot of learnings about how people “use” these things.
I’ve always been jealous of the Chinese and WeChat, and if you’re not sure what I mean, this video is a must see.
Ultimately I’d say that Messenger hasn’t been a purely personal channel for quite a while.
Have any comments? Or just want to get in touch with me? Send me a message over on Messenger :)
