Facebook Messenger Gets Autoplay Ads, Here’s What We Know

Facebook Messenger is now including auto played ads in private conversations. These autoplay videos rolled out on Monday, June 19, but it may be awhile before you see them.

Facebook Messenger is a mobile application that enables chat, voice, and video communication. As of April 2016, Facebook Messenger has over 900 million users worldwide. The app is ranked as the third most popular social networking platform.

Autoplay Ads on Facebook Messenger

A report written by Hanna Kazlowska, QUARTZ, says that according to Stefanos Loukakos who is in charge of Messenger’s business ads, he is aware of this and the company will monitor user behavior if these ads will affect their subscribers.

Loukakos also added that user experience is at topmost priority. He also stated that there were no signs of changes in how people use the app when basic ads were tested.

Facebook has admitted in the past that they were actually running out of space to place ads, and this move could be the consequence of that situation.

On the other hand, according to a Facebook spokesperson statement in Quartz, Messenger users will still remain in control of their experience and will have options to hide specific ads, report an ad, as well as adjust ad targeting preferences. But it does not look like users will be able to disable autoplay ads in the said application.

With that said, Facebook recently launched an augmented reality feature for Messenger that will allow users to see products they are shopping for as if they already have them, such as a car parked in a driveway, and many more. This new feature will likely attract more advertisers to the platform.

Now, the question is, would these ads affect how their users use the app and would they just settle for other apps that can also get the same job done.