BlackBerry today continued to shed more light on future changes to its BBM platform. One of the company’s objectives is to turn BBM into a money-maker and today, it revealed the first details on how it plans to do that. With sponsored content now being pushed to some external beta testers, today’s details are meant to “set the record straight from the get go.”
Jeff Gadway, head of product and brand marketing for BBM, immediately addressed what is probably on most users’ minds: How will ads affect their chats. His answer was pretty simple: “BBM Chats Are Untouchable.”
First, let me be clear. We will not be inserting sponsored content of any kind in to BBM chats with your friends, family and colleagues. We understand that keeping the BBM chat experience you know and love free of this type of content is important to you. Instead, we are taking a very measured and deliberate approach to connecting BBM Channels users with content they might be interested in from BBM Channel owners, which will include brands and businesses.
With BlackBerry already working with brands and businesses to develop communities around BBM channels, it sees an opportunity to use content such as advertising, sponsored content, targeted content to promote those channels. It will do in three different ways:
- Featured Placements: Spots placed on the Featured Channels tab of the landing page for BBM Channels.
- Sponsored Invites: The ability to invite select BBM users based on user data such as age, location and interests. The number of invites a BBM users will be capped, likely at three per month.
- Sponsored Posts: The placement of sponsored posts on the Updates tab in BBM alongside updates from a user’s BBM contacts and BBM channels they are already subscribed to.
There is no word on when this advertising will start hitting BBM but with an external beta already underway, it will not be much longer.
Source : Inside BlackBerry Blog