Facebook Messenger Home Screens Ads Expand To A Global Audience

Feel left out not seeing advertisements in Facebook's Messenger? Don't fret: that's going to be changing real soon. Following what Facebook touts as being a successful test in Australia and Thailand, the social media giant is planning to expand advertising in its Messenger service to the rest of the world.

For advertisers, this is a great move, although the verdict remains out as to whether or not it will cause Messenger fans to revolt. In an example provided, it appears that the advertising never appears inside of chats, but will instead be nestled in the contact list screen. Located here, the ads wouldn't be too intrusive - especially not to the extent they would be if they broke up one of your conversations.

Facebook tells advertisers that Messenger has 1.2 billion users that use the service each month, which is a reach of almost unparalleled levels. The implementation is intuitive, too. When someone taps on an ad, the webpage loads from inside of Messenger, reducing the amount of time it takes to load, and allows the user to simply hit the back button to return to their messages.

In addition to this new solution, Facebook continues to offer advertisers the ability to create an ad that directly links to Messenger, allowing customers to get in touch with the company quickly and easily. That all comes in addition to the ability to deploy chat bots to keep new customers engaged, even if a live person doesn't happen to be around.

Still, as lucrative as Messenger advertising might sound to some companies, many users have begun to grow tired of the amount of advertising Facebook as a whole implements. Whether this will be the last straw for many, we're not sure, but we can guess that most people would rather not see ads in their instant messenger app, of all places.