Today Tango, a messaging app with over 200 million users globally, launched a plug-and-play solution for brands called Channels. It functions similarly to a Facebook brand page– a user follows a channel and then can view content like photos and video within a news feed. Launch partners include Spotify, Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Cheezburger, Dailymotion, and OK Go.
The fact that TechCrunch, an authority on emerging tech, is betting early on Tango and messaging apps is perhaps the best indication that this is a noteworthy opportunity for media owners and brands. As further proof: only two hours after launch, Spotify’s Tango channel already had close to 25,000 followers and over 2,000 likes and 450 comments on its morning playlist posting.
As we mentioned in our recent white paper on the messaging app space, Tango is in many ways an outlier compared to the competition. Unlike popular millennial chat apps like Kik and Snapchat, its demographic skews heavily towards 25-50+ and proves that messaging is a phenomenon impacting all age groups. With close to 70 million users in the US, Tango has a great audience that has already proven itself very receptive to interacting with games and music on the platform.
Tango is also arguably the most brand friendly of the messaging apps, and has found success with a native ad product leveraged by companies like Dunkin’ Donuts, eBay, Spotify and others to drive app installs. In all likelihood these ads will also become a popular way for brands to attract subscribers to Tango Channels in the future.
Channels are currently free for brands to set up, so for companies looking to experiment with messaging app marketing there’s little risk involved in this opportunity. For now Tango houses the channels tab at the top of every user’s newsfeed. Once you click into it, you can search five primary categories: Entertainment, News, Sports, Music, and Funny & Cute. To see the program in action for yourself, click here to download the app or watch the official Channels intro video.