An example ad in Messenger.
Ads are coming to Facebook Messenger.
After testing Messenger ads in Australia and Thailand, Facebook announced on Tuesday that any advertiser will be able to buy ads in the app, which boasts 1.2 billion users.
The ads won't be shown in conversations. They will instead exist in the main inbox tab between chat threads.
Facebook said it will start rolling out ads slowly, starting with a small percentage of users in the US over the coming weeks. Marketers will be able to buy targeted Messenger ads alongside News Feed and Instagram in Facebook's ad manager.
Showing traditional ads is a change of course for Messenger, which originally tried to monetize by pushing businesses to create bots for chatting directly with customers. The so-called chat bots have yet to catch on widely, but changes were made earlier this year to make them easier to use and more discoverable.
Adding more ads to Messenger now comes at a good time for Facebook: The company has warned that it's nearing the limit of ads it can show in its main revenue source, the News Feed.