Facebook puts advertisements in Messenger app worldwide

CAIRO 15 July 2017: Facebook is starting to gradually roll out ads in its Messenger app worldwide, despite American newspapers moving for a law change to regulate the digital advertising market in order to stop digital giants such as Facebook and Google from taking over the news industry.

According to a report by American website Engadget, Facebook’s only reason behind adding ads to the Messenger home page is simply “to make money.” The ads will be expanding noticeably on Messenger until the end of 2017.

The ads will appear in the Messenger inbox of recent chats (homepage), not in the conversations, and will include clicking on the ads to go directly to the advertisers’ websites, allowing users to directly interact with the brands. Facebook has also previously allowed businesses to send sponsored messages to users who have previously connected with them, but with the new expansion, ads will appear to everyone, regardless of prior contact, as long as the targeting criteria applies to the user.
Sarah Vizard, content editor of Marketing Week, noted that Facebook has been looking for ways to make money from Messenger, which, according to Facebook, has more than 1.2 billion active users.

The company has been testing Messenger ads in Thailand and Australia since January, which is said to have performed well.

In Egypt, a number of parliamentarians are planning to submit a request to draft a law against the duopoly of Facebook and Google.

Lawmaker Mustafa Bakry told Egypt Today last week that a number of other parliamentarians will submit a request for drafting a law against the duopoly of digital ads.

“The situation became very difficult, as they (the social media and search engines) gain profits at the expense of Egyptian media outlets. We have to move like other countries do” to save their news industries, Bakry added.

Bakry did not go into further details, but added that Parliament members will discuss the proposal before submitting it.

Since November 2015, Egyptian online newspapers have voiced their fears over the future of the digital newspapers. Youm7 Editor-in-Chief Khaled Salah published on November 17, 2015 an article on the threats the Egyptian news industry could face as enormous amounts of revenue go to Facebook and Google.

“The online news industry in Egypt and the Arab world may face a major threat from some global social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, Google, etc., which dominate major fields of the advertising market worldwide,” Salah said.

Also on his Twitter account on June 30, 2016, Salah called on the Parliament to impose taxation on Facebook and Google ads.

A number of U.S. media giants formed a coalition under the title of “News Media Alliance”, as the two companies dominate 70 percent of digital advertising industry.

Being reachable and accessible for millions of people worldwide, the two companies managed to pull a big share of the online ads without paying taxes.

The two companies, Facebook and Google, dominated 20 percent of the global advertising market in 2016, according to data and analysis agency Zenith in May 2017, without paying taxes on the online ads, which in return negatively affects the newspapers’ share of the ads revenues.


Infographic on Facebook and Google's domination of digital market- Egypt Today/Pakinam ElGohary