Chatbots Could be Coming to your Messenger App

All of those ads and articles you see at the bottom of webpages are actually specifically tailored towards you based upon your past activity, as first reported on by Forbes. One of the companies behind this is called Outbrain, and they are hoping to bring more individually tailored content right to you through your messaging apps. In what will probably be considered spam by most, the company hopes to use AI chatbots to bring you news and updates through direct messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

[Image Source: Flickr]

Many publishers struggle with finding the best way to get traffic directed to their website, and traditionally the best method has been through phone apps. However, app download rates are declining and users are beginning to interact with media in a far more organically structured way. With this new messaging ability, content providers would pay to have their content marketed to a set of users, and Outbrain would take a cut of the click revenue.

If you are feeling like your personal space has been invaded by Outbrain and other internet marketing companies, it gets worse. Over 600 million people have clicked through Outbrain's ads and every time someone does, this data gets stored in a user profile to better tailor ads to you in the future.

[Image Source: Flickr]

While you may feel that all of this is an invasion of privacy, it is all typical data collection in the modern information age. Each webpage is created specifically to get you to click on ads, in turn making someone a little bit of profit.

Some may not want to be contacted by computer chatbots and told to read an article or check out the "Top 10 whatever.." but on a large scale, this marketing system is proven to work effectively. As the online media industry continues to grow, publishers seeking to get their content in front of more people are finding new creative solutions. Sometimes the future is cool, but in this case it may just get a little more annoying.

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