14 DAY TRIAL // The recent announcement regarding the upcoming availability of Stickers and the BBM Shop for Android, iOS and Windows Phone users raised some questions within the community related to the way BlackBerry plans to monetize on its instant messaging service.
There have been lots of more or less mischievous voices claiming BlackBerry will be introducing ads to its BBM service, following the release of BBM Shop and Stickers.
In order to express these concerns, Jeff Gadway, the head of product and brand marketing for BBM, issues an official statement where he explains how his company plans to promote various brands through its BBM service.
First of all, Gadway is very clear when it comes to BBM chats and states that these are “untouchable” when it comes to any sort of advertising, “we will not be inserting sponsored content of any kind in to BBM chats with your friends, family and colleagues.”
However, BlackBerry’s official has confirmed the Canadian company plans to connect BBM Channels users with content they might be interested in from BBM Channels owners, which is likely to include both businesses and brands.
Although most of BBM users are only taking advantage on BBM chats, there are some who are interested in BBM Channels, allowing them to promote their owned brands, services or other businesses.
It appears that BlackBerry intends to use three ways to bring sponsored content to BBM Channels users, and plenty details on these have been offered by Gadway.
The first way to bring ads to BBM Channels is to allow those who own a channel to secure space on the Featured Channels tab, which in turn will help them promote their channel even more.
Secondly, BlackBerry announced that it would introduce a new option that will allow BBM Channels owners to invite BBM users to join their channel. Those BBM users who decline the invitation will never receive another one from the same channel.
BlackBerry stresses it would try to limit the number of invitations a BBM user receives monthly to three. In addition, the Canadian company claims it will also control which brands and businesses will be offered the option to send Sponsored Invites.
Lastly, BlackBerry mentions that within the Updates tab in BBM, it will “allow BBM Channel owners to place sponsored posts alongside updates from your BBM Contacts and the BBM Channels you are already subscribed to.” However, these sponsored posts will be labeled accordingly.