Kik is one of the more popular instant messaging apps out there today, especially for younger audiences. Like most messaging apps, however, it isn’t usually easy to use it for marking, which is why most people don’t give it much though, but Kik wants to change that.
They launched an emoji keyboard several months ago to make it easier for users to ‘communicate’ using more of the fun emoji’s, including animated emoji’s. This was extremely successful and people used it to send millions of animated gif emojis to eachother.
Kik has now announced that they are expanding this keyboard to include branded GIFs. These branded gifs will be sent throughout the Kik app by users. In addition to being fun for the users, they are also a simple way to get a message out for brands.
To start with they are launching animated gifs from Zoolander 2 and WWF. They did not provide much information as to how or when they will roll out this advertising option to more marketers or brands. This is certainly an interesting option for getting a message out and while it is not going to be an ideal solution for all marketers, it clearly has its place. We’ll have to keep a close eye on how this performs and what Kik decides to do with it going forward.
