The short version

Ben Thompson predicted on November 13, 2024: “I’m optimistic about this e-commerce channel becoming a thing, and this is generative AI enabling that… this is generative AI enabling more advertising, but not by generating ads — by making this ad product, click to message, viable for retailers in a way it wasn’t before…” Verdict: Still evolving. Meta has continued to…

Prediction by

Ben Thompson

On November 13, 2024

“I’m optimistic about this e-commerce channel becoming a thing, and this is generative AI enabling that… this is generative AI enabling more advertising, but not by generating ads — by making this ad product, click to message, viable for retailers in a way it wasn’t before…”

Follow-up

Meta has continued to invest heavily in messaging-based commerce and AI agents within WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger. Click-to-message ads have grown, but there is limited public data isolating their performance and revenue impact separately from Meta’s broader ad business, making it hard to empirically confirm they have become a major new e-commerce channel.

From the High Caliber AI network — see the AI for PR module in the course.