Facebook’s new Messenger update brings ads to your feed

Facebook has been expanding how businesses and people interact with its social media platform. That expansion now includes offering businesses the ability to send “highly-targeted, in-context” ads to customers they’ve interacted with before. These ads will show up in Messenger threads like any other message you’d receive from one of your contacts.

Before you start rioting in the streets about more Facebook advertising, the company says sponsored messages can’t be sent to all Facebook users. Rather, the businesses’ mailing list will only include customers who have interacted with them using the platform before while requesting information from the business. Facebook doesn’t make a distinction between users interacting with live customer support reps and chat bots, though.

For businesses that are already using chatbots, these new messaging features are available. If you’ve reached out to a chat bot on Facebook, you can probably expect an influx of ads in your feed as advertisers begin testing the waters with these new ways to reach people.