Facebook’s pivot to messaging puts advertisers in a tight spot

Marketers familiar with platform’s wide-open community, but not messaging apps

Many marketers will need new strategies if consumers adopt Facebook Inc.’s promised platform for private, encrypted, disappearing messages.

“I don’t view this as replacing the public platform. Facebook and Instagram will continue to get more important,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said Wednesday, as he announced the company’s new plan for messaging. But “there is as rich of a platform to develop around the intimate and private communications as there is around the more public one.”

While marketers are very familiar with Facebook’s wide- open community, they are far less experienced with the conversations and social dynamics on messaging apps.

“Messaging apps are not the same,” said Jessica Liu, a senior analyst at Forrester who focuses on social marketing. “They are not a place that traditionally welcomed brand messaging of any sort.”

It isn’t clear whether private-messaging users generate anywhere near as much behavioral data that people do when they engage with posts, people and companies on the Facebook “town square,” as Mr. Zuckerberg calls the open news feed.

“Marketers would love to be able to mine data from across platforms and reach audiences across platforms,” said Rob Bernstein, U.S. managing director at Reprise, a digital marketing agency within Interpublic Group of Cos. “If the future is encryption, then it definitely leaves a question for what’s next for marketers and messaging.”

Asked whether marketers will still be able to reach consumers on messaging platforms, Facebook referred back to Mr. Zuckerberg’s Wednesday blog post announcing the new emphasis on messaging.

But marketers already serve targeted Facebook ads into Facebook Messenger. Last summer, Facebook announced ads within its WhatsApp mes- saging platform to suggest that consumers contact companies directly within the app instead of calling. Facebook said it would start showing ads this year in WhatsApp’s Status feature, montages that resemble Instagram stories.

And advertisers are old hands at buying branded filters for Snapchat and Instagram photos and videos that users can share widely—or just with friends.

Marketers are also exploring approaches that aren’t strictly ad plays, such as creating Facebook Messenger accounts offering everything from customer service (fresh towels to your hotel room, for example) to AI- powered makeup recommendations.

WhatsApp offers tools to help small and large businesses connect with consumers and charges businesses to send documents like boarding passes or receipts via the app.

Companies are selling real things, too, in slick ways designed to encourage repeat business. Consumers can order Domino’s in messaging apps, including Facebook and Slack. Facebook could make new money from its shift to private messaging, including potentially charging a cut of revenue on transactions completed through its messaging apps.