Facebook wants to slide ads into your DMs according to new patent

If you’ve ever felt like Facebook was literally listening to your conversations, you’re really not going to like its newest idea.

A new patent filing details how Facebook could place targeted advertising inside of private conversations in Messenger. The company has allowed businesses to run ads in its messaging app for some time, but has stopped short of placing ads inside of users’ private conversations.

The patent, however, suggests the company may be thinking about significantly escalating the amount of advertising in its chat application. The patent, which was filed in April but made public today, describes ways in which businesses could use location data and the content of conversations to surface targeted ads directly in users’ chats via a “plug-in.”

The ads would come via a “plug-in,” which would allow people to use other services inside of Messenger, such as games or ride-hailing services (both of which are features Facebook Messenger has previously introduced.) 

But, according to the patent, these so-called plug-ins would also allow the app to surface targeted advertisements based on the text of your conversation or even your location data. Facebook Messenger already incorporates many third-party services in its app, but has not allowed them to surface ads in private conversations.

In one illustration described in the patent, a person messaging a friend about a trip to the Grand Canyon could trigger an ad for Grand Canyon postcards. In addition to keywords, these ads could also rely on location data from either individual’s phones, according to the description (emphasis added):

 (“Bob”) is currently at the Grand Canyon in Arizona and is communicating with the first user 305 (his friend Alice), who is in San Jose, Calif. The plug-in 114 within Alice’s supplemented instance 111A might use, as tailoring data, the content of the communication thread between the two users, such as textual keywords “Grand Canyon” in the textual message 671A, or “San Jose” in the textual message 671B. The tailoring data could also include geolocation data (e.g., GPS coordinates) of Alice’s client device, or of Bob’s client device (as provided by Bob’s client device

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company frequently patents new ideas, not all of which make their way into the company’s products. 

But the fling, which bears the name of Facebook’s engineering director for Messenger, indicates one way the company could ramp up its advertising efforts as it attempts to refocus its service around private messaging. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earlier this year he plans to re-orient the company’s services around private messaging and encryption.

If Facebook were to place ads in private conversations, however, it would likely trigger massive privacy concerns. Many users already believe that Facebook’s apps literally listen to their real-life conversations to serve them ads. That idea has been repeatedly debunked, but inserting ads into private chats would still likely further fuel distrust of the company, which just agreed to pay a $5 billion fine to the FTC for privacy violations and drive up a new wave of anger among users.