Kik has been taking a different road than most of its many competitors. The company has embraced independence rather than acquisition, while apps like Viber and WhatsApp allowed themselves to be swallowed by the highest bidder.
This week, Kik brought native video into its core feature set, and now it’s bringing something to brands who choose to embrace its promoted chats feature: targeting.
Targeting fits alongside Kik’s Keywords feature launched last year, allowing brands to have more control over who, how, and now where users engage with them. Brands can target bot gender and geography (USA, UK, Australia, or Canada) and even operating system, so if you use iOS, Android, or Windows Phone and you’re following a particular brand, get ready for more personalized chats.
“When we launched Kik Promoted Chats in August 2014, we wanted brands to connect with users on a personal, one-to-one level, Kik said in a blog post. Success stories from brands like Cheezburger show us that Promoted Chats is the right way to engage users in a one-to-one chat setting. And since the launch of the program, more than 60 brands, including Funny or Die, Seventeen Magazine, Skullcandy and Vans, are seeing high engagement levels, with organic reach of 75-80% of Kik users. More than 10 million users have opted into a conversation with a brand, over 250 million total messages have been exchanged, and users are now sending an average of 9.4 messages to brands they’re chatting with.”
Kik says the new targeting is the “first of many future improvements” to come for Promoted Chats, and also includes a new and improved dashboard.