When BlackBerry announced that BBM would be making its way onto multiple platforms, such as iOS and Android (and Windows Phone later on), many were wondering how BlackBerry would be able to make money from the service. After all the service used to come bundled with BlackBerry phones as an exclusive in the past, but now that it’s free for other platforms, how will BlackBerry make money?
Well for starters BlackBerry will be selling stickers, and if you might recall a while back it was suggested that ads could be inserted into the messaging service through BBM Channels, where companies could pay for ads in the Channels Updates section of BBM.
It wasn’t clear when BlackBerry would begin to monetize its service, but it looks like it could be happening soon, thanks to the Android BBM beta which notes that ads could be arriving as soon as the latest version of the app leaves beta.
Based on the notes, the ads will be trialled during the beta and the ads will be making an appearance as sponsored invites in the Invites section of BBM, and as sponsor channel posts in the Updates section of BBM.
Thankfully the ads don’t sound particularly intrusive, so for those who aren’t overly fond of ads, you might not necessarily encounter too much of it (which begs the question as to whether such ad placements will be effective or not).
Filed in . Read more about Apps, BBM and BlackBerry.