Last week reports leaked about Facebook's (META 1.17%) alleged plans for monetizing its Messenger app. According to TechCrunch, as early as next quarter Messenger users could begin seeing promoted messages from businesses they've interacted with. The move marks the first time the company has made plans to monetize its 800 million user property and signals the potential plan for the company's other massaging platform, WhatsApp.
In this video segment, Sean O'Reilly and Dylan Lewis explain why investors should love the move and shouldn't worry about ads worsening the user experience.
A transcript follows the video.
This podcast was recorded on Feb. 19, 2016.
Dylan Lewis: As an investor, I think you have to love this.
Sean O'Reilly: That's the million-dollar question, because its stock's just over $100, all-time high. Mark Zuckerberg's worth, I don't know, $45 billion to $50 billion. It's just winning all around.
Lewis: Yeah. They've taken their flagship platform, monetized it incredibly well. They've started taking the learnings from that and applying it to Instagram and building up the ad load there, and, again, doing it in a very manageable, user-friendly way. Now they have these two other properties, one with 800 million users, one with I think about a billion users on WhatsApp, and they're going to start monetizing them. Here's the blueprint for how they're going to do it. There's going to be a lot of crossover. It's not 1.8 billion new people being exposed to ads, but these properties with huge, huge user bases now being monetized. As an investor, you have to love it.
