Facebook Messenger revises chatbot brand policy to expedite responses and in some cases allow ads
Facebook is looking to make its Messenger chat app a more hospitable place for brands by extending their ability to harness standard chat bot ads through the service.
FB Bot
The social media network has refined its policies to cement how often - and when brands can communicate with users. In the past restricted these practises in the platform’s early days fearing users would mark the communications as spam.
The company now offers two bot messaging types; standard and subscription (which remains in BETA). Brands can now send ads and promotional material to users within 24 hours of the user making contact through the app via standard messaging. However, brand bots still cannot message users out-of-the-blue. Instead, a 24-hour mandatory response period will force swift responses and enable a platform for promotion and ads.
The second type is the subscription bot. These loosely include news, productivity and personal tracking systems; they are retricted from advertising, solicitations, marketing, or promotional content unlike the standard bots.
A statement from the company read: “At Messenger, we're committed to enabling high-quality experiences for developers, businesses, and the people they serve. Today, we're launching new policies for the Messenger Platform as well as a faster review process. These updated policies will provide more defined engagement models on the platform, including time-based criteria for businesses to respond to messages and standards for subscriptions in Messenger."
The move comes just days after global pizza chain Domino’s launched a Messenger chat bot capable of initiating easy orders through the chat app.
Earlier this year, Manchester City became the first football club to have a chat bot and and popular video game series Call of Duty erected an ad campaign based on bot interactions through Messenger too.