Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wants the company to accelerate efforts to make money off its messaging products — and on the company’s Q2 earnings call, he shared a roadmap of how it can do it.
“We just started putting ads on Messenger,” Zuckerberg told analysts on a conference call. “I want to see us move even faster.”
As part of its long-term planning, Facebook plans to study what overseas rivals have done with their messaging products — then improve upon those efforts.
“We can look at messaging platforms in other parts of the world and use that as a floor,” Zuckerberg said. “I think we can do better.”
The process, according to Zuckerberg, will be the same one the company used to build up its business of selling ads in users’ News Feeds.
First, build consumer usage, then build up interactions between users and businesses, then “make sure it works,” Zuckerberg said.
If the company executes on its plan, ads in Messenger can be one of the company’s biggest growth drivers over the next few years, after its video ad products.
“We need to get to that place” where the company is now with ads in its News Feed product, which helped drive second-quarter ad revenue up 47 percent from a year earlier.
Facebook said in April that Messenger had 1.2 billion users, up 20 percent from July, 2016.
After a number of analysts on the call asked for more details on Messenger ads, Zuckerberg seemed to walk back his impatience slightly.
“I’m happy with the rate of growth” in the Messenger business, he said. Making it a growth business is “a longer-term thing.”
“Video will be a much bigger driver of growth in the next two to three years than Messenger,” he added.
The company reported growth in profit, sales and users that was better than expected, and also lowered its 2017 expense guidance, sending its shares up 4 percent to a record high.
See also: Here’s Facebook’s plan to make money from Messenger
Mark Zuckerberg wants Facebook to move even faster to put ads in Messenger