Reports: Social

Facebook beat financial analyst estimates with its Q3 2016 earnings but announced that ad revenues would likely slow in 2017, due to the digital ad market feeling the pinch of advertiser budgets, which are lagging behind the shift in user behaviour. Facebook’s stock fell by 7% but Plan B is already in motion: to become a media company.

Facebook Messenger has caught up with WhatsApp, boasting more than 1 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs). Along with WhatsApp and Instagram, Messenger is part of Facebook’s bet on the future of audiences as they migrate away from social networks. Facebook’s messaging apps are the company’s gateway to owning as much as possible of consumers’ mobile life.

Instagram was far from the first image-centric service to gain prominence, but something about its simple interface, filtering capabilities and ease of sharing saw the platform become something of a visual lingua franca for the selfie-generation. Now part of Facebook and boasting impressive growth figures, it surprised many with its longevity and continues to embellish its established position as the premier destination for photographic content in the digital era.

Snapchat represents the Millennial zeitgeist more than any other single app. It continues to engage digitally native young audiences just as much as it appeals to traditional media brands, such as Viacom and CBS, desperate to reach young audiences on their own turf.

The Monthly Active User (MAU) metric is the default measure of digital services but its usefulness is lessening. While it offered desktop-era services a better alternative to page views, its use for mobile apps is increasingly anachronistic. With the advent of smartphones, users are absorbing app-based services far more intimately into their lives, consequently leading to frequency of activity going far beyond monthly usage.

With mobile messaging platforms playing an ever more crucial role in the distribution of mobile experiences, it is imperative that marketers, brands, and strategy teams develop deep familiarity with the characteristics and behaviours of messaging app users.

The desktop right now is undoubtedly where there is the most lost ad revenue due to adblocking. Adblocking on mobile may currently be smaller but this should not be an excuse for complacency and allowing the problem to acquire desktop adblocking proportions before serious notice is taken.

In just a few short years mobile messaging apps have become home to the largest group of digital audiences on the planet, with 4.8 billion cumulative monthly active users. Following websites and social networks, messaging platforms are emerging as the third phase of how audiences congregate digitally.