In recent weeks, it’s been leaked that Facebook Messenger may soon support Material Design and SMS. Now another major new Messenger feature has leaked.
Documents viewed by TechCrunch have revealed that Facebook is planning to implement advertising in Messenger in Q2 2016. The way that it’ll work is that businesses that you’ve previously initiated a conversation with will be able to send you ads as messages in the future. That means that a business that you’ve Liked but never messaged, or even just a random business that you’ve never interacted with, can’t just send you an ad.
While Messenger ads aren’t scheduled to launch until Q2 2016, Facebook is said to be urging businesses to talk with their customers on Messenger now so that they can send ads to them later.
When asked about this leak, Facebook said that it doesn’t comment on rumors or speculation, but went on to say that it aims to ensure that “people do not experience unwanted messages of any type.” That would line up with the info in this leak that claims that businesses will only be able to send you an ad after you’ve initiated a conversation with them.
Facebook’s Messenger is one of the most popular messaging services in the world, and so it’s no surprise that Facebook would experiment with advertising in Messenger to get some revenue out of it. The good news is that if today’s leak holds true, you won’t be able to just get spammed by every business with a Messenger account. So if you truly want to avoid ads, you can avoid using Messenger to contact businesses.
It’s also worth noting that there’s a chance that Messenger ads won’t be launched to the public if they’re poorly received in testing. We’ll just have to wait and see.
