Facebook’s introducing a new messages objective for ads which will help businesses raise awareness of their Messenger presence (and bots) and directly connect more users to the option.
Facebook added similar last November with click to Messenger ads, which, at the time of launch, was solely focused on helping to promote bots.
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The new messages objective ads on this – as explained by Facebook:
“Using this new objective, ads that open conversations in Messenger will now reach people more likely to reply to your business, helping move customers from consideration to action. This means that click to Messenger ads are now more efficient than ever, increasing the value of campaigns that drive traffic to Messenger.”
Despite slower than expected take-up of Messenger Bots, Facebook’s still working to promote the option, and with more than 100,000 monthly active bots on Messenger, there’s clearly brand interest in the tool, and Messenger as a business platform more broadly.
Indeed, according to Facebook, 18 million businesses now exchange more than 2 billion messages with consumers via Messenger every month – a 100% increase in Messenger business activity year-on-year.
More than that, Facebook also notes that 54.4% of US social media users have indicated that they prefer messaging channels over email, phone and online chat, a trend they predict will only increase.
As noted by Marketing Land, the new messages objective doesn’t add a lot in terms of functionality (advertisers can currently drive traffic to their Messenger presence by using Messenger as their destination via the ‘Traffic’ objective). But still, adding it as a more prominent, more direct option will likely get more people considering how to use it, and therefore implementing more campaigns.
The new messages objective will be available to some advertisers from today, rolling out to all users “in the coming months”.