iMessage inline banner ads

Digital advertising is something I experience constantly, though I didn’t start to dig into the underlying mechanics until the recent launch of Stompers. Now I’m thinking about growth all the time. It’s different sharing unhinged UIs for fun daily vs. actively promoting and trying to scale an app you care about deeply.

Yesterday, I spent a decent chunk of time looking at how ads appear in different social media apps. I noticed more companies are trying to make their creative “blend in” with non-sponsored content. Putting aside for a moment that this might be an FTC violation, it’s fun to consider what might happen if rather than trying to blend in, you made the sponsored content even more obvious.

In addition to making it obvious, what if you introduced sponsored content in platforms where it has not lived historically? For example, in particularly long-winded messages on iMessage, you could place a banner ad partway through the message, almost like a commercial break.

Between the privacy invasion and the fact that iMessage has historically been free, I bet people wouldn’t like this. On the other hand, if an ad is well-targeted, I don’t mind it.

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