Tim Peterson says, “Facebook is about to max out the amount of ads it can slot into people’s Facebook feeds, so it’s been ramping up its roll-out of ads elsewhere: to Instagram, to others’ apps and sites through its ad network, to Groups and now to Messenger.

In a test, Facebook has started placing ads on its messaging service’s home screen, the company announced on Wednesday. For now the ads will only be shown to a “very small group of people in Thailand and Australia,” according to a company blog post.

The ads announced on Wednesday are different from the sponsored messages introduced in Messenger last year. Instead of being native to Messenger — like the sponsored messages that brands can buy to ping people who have previously messaged them — the new ads being tested are native to Facebook and migrated to Messenger. They appear to be the equivalent of Google putting a search ad in your Gmail inbox.

A Facebook spokesperson confirmed that the ads being tested in Messenger are Facebook news feed ads and said that advertisers will need to have enabled messaging on their Pages to run these ads in Messenger”.

Facebook tests putting its news feed ads in Messenger to make app more plug-and-pay for brands

Marketing Land

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