The former President of PayPal, David Marcus, serves as Facebook’s VP of messaging products and is the head of Messenger. He was interviewed by Christina Passariello, the Wall Street Journal Deputy Technology Director, on ad strategies for Facebook Messenger and Russian Facebook influence on U.S. politics.
Derived from excerpts of the interview, to start, Marcus points out the uniqueness of the Asian approach toward monetization when asked about previous Facebook tests on monetization. To quote him on this: “You have apps for almost everything you do daily, and we needed to find what problem we could fix for businesses and people alike to generate a decent revenue stream for Facebook.”
Then, he returns to Facebook’s recent introduction of advertising via Messenger. Messaging does not just make interactions instant but also literally preserves past conversations. According to him, Messenger surpasses the mobile website experience in terms of business aspects. The preserving factor, furthermore, makes the advertisers retarget and re-engage’ Facebook’s ad products.
When asked about the overwhelming aspect of advertising that likely bothers consumers, Marcus makes it clear that they don’t ‘want to get in the way of ’ the user interactions on the platform. “Messaging is very transactional” – as he finishes, after mentioning the services like m.me/your-business-brand and click-to-Messenger ads – for the advertisers.
In reply to Passariello’s question on user feedback regarding the ‘overwhelming’ factor, Marcus states – “The way we measure this is by measuring engagement.” He seemed pretty content in this effort.
Additionally, he talked about ‘best practices in monetization with WhatsApp.’ He points out that both Messenger and WhatsApp have about 1.3 billion monthly active users. And both the platforms are in the test stages of monetization.
On the Russian Facebook influence, Marcus expressed the company’s intent to not tolerate the misuse of the platform in any way. He supports the ongoing investigations and is looking forward to the coming results.
A witty, insightful question of Passariello had a mention 470 profiles that Facebook recognized. In Marcus’ spot-on words – “My understanding at this stage is it’s a small number.”
He, representing Facebook, aims at consistency in enhancing more profoundness on approaches of new products and experiences – for usage “in ways that the platform wasn’t designed for” – hinting at further innovations coming up for the users across the world.
