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Ads are coming to Facebook Messenger’s home screen

Ads are coming to Facebook Messenger’s home screen

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Facebook must really like the revenue that it’s getting from ads on the Facebook Messenger home screen, because after a limited beta in Thailand and Australia, the company has decided to roll out the advertising option worldwide. According to VentureBeat, you’ll likely see the flow of your home screen broken up by sponsored ads before the end of 2017. And just like the ads you see on Facebook itself and Instagram, they’ll be targeted and specific to you.

Aside from the home screen placement, businesses on Messenger can already send sponsored messages to users that have messaged their business previously. “[Advertising is] not necessarily everything, but it’s definitely how we’re going to be making money right now,” Messenger head of product Stan Chudnovsky told VentureBeat. “There are some other business models we are exploring as well, but they’re all around ads one way or another.” Lovely. I’m sure the brands are salivating. Back in May, Facebook revamped the Messenger home screen to again focus on chat and communication; other features like Games were shifted to different tabs.

Chudnovsky said that Facebook will “start slow” with the home screen ads in Messenger. “When the average user can be sure to see them we truly don’t know because we’re just going to be very data-driven and user feedback-driven on making that decision.” So maybe if enough people totally hate them, Facebook will stick to its other Messenger ad options.

And if not, well, remember that you can install Messenger Lite on Android to hopefully avoid a lot of this.