When WhatsApp began serving ads in mid-June, there were two main reactions. One, didn’t the founders always insist there would never be ads on WhatsApp? And two, what the heck took Meta so long?
As Mark Zuckerberg has said, the metaverse is still years away. So, for the near term, Meta’s opportunity is in messaging.
If there’s one word to remember from Facebook’s virtual developers conference on Wednesday, it’s “messaging.” Facebook made a flurry of announcements about new business messaging tools for developers, which Konstantinos Papamiltiadis, Facebook’s VP of platform partnerships, called “a key focus area.” Mark Zuckerberg said much the same during Facebook’s most recent earnings call in April, […]
After months of sheltering at home – and retail sales in the toilet – Americans are ready to shop. Retail sales in the United States were up nearly 18% in May after record lows in March and April, according to the US Census Bureau’s most recent monthly retail trade report, released on Tuesday. And hey, it’s encouraging […]
If only reopening the US economy was like flipping a switch. “But it’s just not,” said Craig Atkinson, chief client officer at performance agency Tinuiti. Reopening will be a gradual process that rolls out differently depending on vertical, region and consumer sentiment. Monday in New York City, for example, marked Phase One of reopening, but […]
“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Augie Ray, vice president analyst, customer experience and marketing, at Gartner. Brands are struggling with what to say in advertising and outbound communications during the COVID-19 pandemic. The desire to be […]
Facebook and Twitter both acknowledged this week that they’ll be taking revenue hits due to the coronavirus situation. These admissions aren’t surprising – but they are telling. Late Tuesday, Facebook said that its services are experiencing “unprecedented” growth and “new records in usage almost every day,” but that this isn’t translating into ad revenue gains. “Our […]
Facebook is changing the way users discover businesses and engage with bots on the platform. In the coming months, Facebook will phase out the Discover tab, one of the portals within Messenger where people can browse Messenger bots, businesses to message and games to play. Released in 2017, the tab was originally posiitoned as one […]
This is not a test: App messaging platform Airship is buying Apptimize, an A/B testing platform that helps mobile marketers rapidly run experiments across apps and sites, including OTT apps. Airship, which rebranded from Urban Airship in April, declined to share terms for the deal, which was announced on Tuesday. But around 20 people from […]
Mark Zuckerberg penned a lengthy post last week laying out Facebook’s vision for a “privacy-focused” future – but it’s not going to change Facebook’s business model. Although Zuckerberg expends a lot of ink on the importance of data security and protecting messaging with end-to-end encryption, he doesn’t mention the interest and user-related data that powers Facebook’s […]
Facebook is getting beaten up by a punishing news cycle – but, for its part, it’s beating the street. The stock surged more than 17% in after-hours trading on Wednesday. Revenue for the fourth quarter clocked in at $16.91 billion, a 30.4% year-over-year (YoY) increase. Nearly all of that – $16.64 billion – was thanks […]
The news feed is still a money-printing machine for core Facebook. But people aren’t sharing like they used to – Pivotal Research analyst Brian Wieser used Nielsen data to detect that consumption on core Facebook, including Messenger, was down 13% in September – and now Facebook is putting its faith into what it hopes will […]
The Big Story is a breezy podcast featuring a roundtable of AdExchanger editors talking about the biggest stories from the past week. It is available wherever you subscribe to podcasts. When giants move, everyone takes notice. This week on “The Big Story,” the AdExchanger team looks at some small but significant shifts in Amazon’s and […]
Just as device manufacturers want to be Apple, ecommerce shops want to be Amazon and social networks look up to Facebook, China-based WeChat is the chat application others seek to emulate. Yes, WeChat, a free app with 600 million monthly active users (100 million fewer than Facebook Messenger), enables chatting, but it’s also a platform […]
Kik’s attempt to become “the WeChat of the West” has been bolstered by a $50 million infusion from WeChat’s Chinese developer, Tencent. Kik will use the funds to focus on the US teen market, a decision company President Josh Jacobs said came from observing Chinese-based WeChat’s accomplishments courting native smartphone users. He sees parallels with […]
Messaging apps now attract just as many users as social media platforms. The combined users of Viber, WeChat, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger now outrank Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, according to recent BI Intelligence research. But marketers have struggled to tap into that audience. Emojis might be a brand’s way in. “Emojis have become for […]
That might be the look on your face when you hear that emoji are a highly promising new advertising tool. But it’s true. As Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans recently mused in a blog post: “The potential to turn messaging into a platform is the Trojan horse that drives a lot of the excitement in […]
When Canadian messaging platform Kik, which aims to become the “WeChat of the West,” hired former Accuen CEO Josh Jacobs as its president of Kik Services, many wondered why someone who had been so ingrained in advertising would pivot to messaging. Or maybe it’s not such a pivot: After all, Jacobs will supervise the new […]
