Dive Brief:
- Marketers seeking a young audience should look to mobile messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Kik, and WhatsApp for advertising and communication, according to an article by Jim Tomanchek, director of partner development at Adaptly, published in AdWeek.
- Research has found that consumers use mobile messaging apps around nine times per day, while five times is the average for all apps. Mobile messaging apps also have a retention rate of 68% after one month, compared to 38% for all apps.
- Among Facebook’s messaging apps alone, WhatsApp has one billion users while Messenger has 800 million monthly active users.
Dive Insight:
By the end of this year, 49% of U.S. mobile phone users will engage in mobile messaging, according to research by eMarketer. Already, 91% of Chinese internet users use mobile messaging, a rate even higher than search at 82%.
Last year, Facebook made it easier for marketers to reach customers on Messenger by allowing brands to add Messenger chat boxes on their websites. Reports say it is now expanding those marketing opportunities by allowing brands that had previously engaged in a chat session with someone to send new marketing messages to them.
The new capability was described as bringing advertising to Messenger, but Facebook’s VP of measurement and insights Brad Smallwood quickly clarified that characterization at a Venture Beat event stating the new capability would bring “marketing” and not “advertising” to the mobile messaging app.
