Facebook Messenger boss hints that more ads are coming to the service
Facebook Messenger users can expect to see more adds popping up in their inbox. David Marcus, the company's vice-president of messaging products has said advertising, not payments, will be the service's primary revenue driver.
Facebook Messenger boss hints that more ads are coming to the service
Speaking to Recode, the boss asserted: "We’re not going to take cuts of payments. One thing we traditionally do, and is a decent business for us, is advertising. So we’ll continue focusing on that."
Facebook tapped Marcus in 2014 from Paypal, leading some to assume Messenger's monetization plans would revolve around social commerce, but it appears the giant will stick to what it knows within Messenger's walls.
"Advertising is great. It’s a fantastic business," Marcus added. "You [still] need to enable payments and all that kind of stuff to remove friction from the experience when someone wants to buy something. If you do that, then the value of that conversation for the business increases."
His comments come as Facebook has announced the launch of Messenger group payments in the US, allowing users to sort complex financial transactions between more than two people within the chat feature.
At the moment, Messenger only offers two ad units - one which directs people in the news feed back into the service and another that places ads inside a user's inbox.
Payments helped Facebook pull in $753m last year, mostly from deskop game purchases, but that side of the business has declined by 23% since 2014. Facebook's overall ad business, meanwhile, was worth $26bn in 2016.