Facebook have just announced their latest update for chat application Messenger which aims to change the way they do advertisements. Back in April the social network launched chatbots, and today they aim to integrate these chatbots with sponsored advertisements through the networks messaging platform Messenger.
The new update titled 1.3 was announced by Messenger’s VP of product David Marcus at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon. In a blog post on the Messenger blog a Facebook representative stated “All advertisers on Facebook now have the ability to reach people in News Feed and direct them to Messenger. This is an ad destination we began testing a few months ago and we are happy to announce that this is now available to all Facebook advertisers.”
Upon installing the latest update, which is expected to launch sometime in the coming days, users that click on special sponsored content on the Facebook App will be able to open that content in Messenger where they will be able to talk to the chatbot about the product.
Some users will understandably be worried about these chatbots possibly contacting them out of the blue, but Facebook has aimed to address this by giving users control of the chats. Users will only receive messages from sponsored advertisers that they have chosen to engage with, and users have control of the chats, even being able to block advertisers.
The update comes days after it was rumoured that Facebook was bringing out in-chat games (similar to those found through Apple’s Messages Application) to the Messenger platform.
This article was originally written for Pockefullofapps.com
