Dive Brief:
- Facebook officially rolled out its rumored Instant Games platform — featuring titles such as Pac-Man, Galaga and Words with Friends — on the Messenger app, according to a company news post.
- Users can access games via a controller icon found within the conversation message interface, via the app’s search field or on regular Facebook News Feed.
- According to Recode, Facebook users spend around 15% of their time on the website playing games but Instant Games is the first time the social network has integrated them directly into the mobile app experience.
Dive Insight:
The strategy behind bringing games to the in-app experience echoes the Instant Articles feature, which keeps users inside Facebook's walled garden of offerings when reading mobile-optimized stories from publishers rather than sending them to links offsite. Instant Games similarly grants users the option to play games within Facebook rather than having to download and open a separate app outside of the social network's ecosystem.
Messenger has proven to be an impressive driver of engagement for Facebook in its standalone form this year with over one billion users, and adding lightweight games that can be shared and played with friends in-app is another way to keep those users in one place. The ability to link directly from News Feed proper to Messenger's Instant Games reinforces this walled garden approach and echoes the recent introduction of News Feed ads that directly link to 1:1 conversations with brands on Messenger.
Marketers have taken a particular liking to Messenger, launching over 30,000 service chatbots since the app integrated the technology earlier this year, and a dedicated games platform presents a new opportunity for branded experiences. Pepsi is already showing interest in using Messenger for more than just customer care, launching a chatbot-powered game for its PepsiMoji campaign earlier this week. Lightweight games can be a fun way to drive consumer engagement and extend the life of existing campaigns, as Pepsi's move shows.