Advertising's New Frontier: Talk to the Bot -Chat App Kik Unveils Feature That Lets Users Converse With Dozens of Brands

The Wall Street Journal reports:

This month, with little fanfare, the most popular chat app among teens in the U.S. launched a feature that could be the future of advertising. Or, at the least, it marks the dawn of a new age in how brands engage.

People conversing directly with brands via bots. I call it chatvertising.

I can hear hisses from the peanut gallery already, and you could argue advertising is the last area of human endeavor where we need more innovation. But what if the metaphorical "conversation" marketers always claim to be having with us became literal?

Kik, a chat service like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger, claims that four in 10 U.S. teens are active users of its service. And now, thanks to the application of a decades-old technology—the chat bot—those Kik-using teens are having something like actual conversations with a half dozen brands, including Moviefone, Funny or Die, and the Kik team itself.

You'll want to read this one.