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?
Meta had a rocky third quarter and the market reacted accordingly. Its metaverse division, Reality Labs, lost nearly $3.7 billion. But the metaverse (whatever that ends up meaning) is still five to 10 years out, and Nicola Mendelsohn, VP of Meta’s global business group, told AdExchanger that Meta is still investing heavily in its core, including ad performance.
Meta is struggling to get its wheels turning on Reels. But Meta has seen more success with business messaging. Click-to-message ads are “one of our fastest-growing ad products,” Dan Levy, VP of business messaging at Meta, tells AdExchanger.
It’s not surprising that AppTrackingTransparency and the end of third-party cookies on Chrome didn’t come up during the razzle-dazzle of Meta’s NewFronts debut this week. But advertisers have been asking about both a lot, especially for brands focused on commerce.
Emoji have entered the lexicon. Two of Holler CEO Travis Montaque’s favorites are the upside-down smiley face and the dizzy face with spiral eyes, new on iOS 14.5. He breaks out the latter “when I’m on Zoom calls for six hours.” Although there was a time when emoji might have seemed like a facile, even […]
Facebook said on Thursday that it’s testing and introducing a batch of new products and tools that aim to help businesses personalize the experiences they offer on Facebook without resorting to targeted advertising. The products also make it easier for businesses to manage their day-to-day interactions with customers across Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and the big […]
“Today, we’re going to talk about building a privacy-focused social platform,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg declared, with only a mild sense of irony, as he kicked off the F8 developer conference in San Jose on Tuesday morning. One would be forgiven for wondering if Facebook is even capable of such a pivot, and Zuckerberg recognized […]
Facebook’s plan to integrate the backend infrastructure of its messaging platforms isn’t sitting well with privacy advocates, security experts, European regulators or US lawmakers. Alarm bells are ringing all over the place. The Irish Data Protection Authority says it’s going to be “very closely scrutinizing” the situation, particularly where it might involve the sharing and […]
Facebook has been aggressively pushing its non-core apps to make money, a decision that caused friction between the mothership and the founders of WhatsApp and Instagram, all of whom have recently left the building. So, where does that leave Messenger – a homegrown app with over 1.3 billion users that, thankfully for Facebook, has no […]
Facebook is pretty much minting money at this point. Despite concerns over ad load maxing out in the news feed, Facebook posted revenue of $9.32 billion for the second quarter, up 45% year over year from $6.43 billion. Mobile ad revenue at $8 billion was responsible for the vast majority of Facebook’s overall revenue in […]
Kids are accustomed to lying about their age. Most don’t bother with getting their parents’ permission to use Facebook, Kik, Whisper, Snapchat, Instagram et al. And that makes the data resulting from their usage quite murky, said Jenny Mirken, CEO and founder of Jet.me, a chat app and social network developed with the preteen set […]
As more brands and publishers seek to reach millennial audiences, FOX’s video ad platform True[X] is eyeing tech like chat bots and messaging apps that are trendy with teens and 20-somethings. In a partnership with messaging app Kik, revealed Wednesday, True[X] will begin to integrate 15-second interactive video ads that allow Kik users to exchange […]
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 […]
