• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, May 4, 2016

Solidifying its position as a go-to between businesses and their customers, Instagram is testing brand pages and contact buttons. As with any Facebook Page, the contact buttons let users email businesses directly, and retrieve directions to a nearby store.

Instagram only recently began offering more sophisticated targeting capabilities to advertisers. Last summer, its ad technology finally started leveraging Facebook’s ads infrastructure -- something brands had long asked for.

Now, Instagram’s global mobile ad revenues are expected to reach $2.81 billion -- or about 10% of Facebook's global ad revenues -- by 2017, according to eMarketer. If accurate, Instagram will by then have higher net mobile display ad revenues than both Google and Twitter.

The change is part of a broader effort by Facebook to turn all of its properties into open lines of communication between users and brands.

To that end, the social giant recently began encouraging partners to reimage their consumer-facing business in terms of bots. Directly within Messenger, they can now provide automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates; customized communications like receipts and shipping notifications; and even live automated messages.

What Facebook is doing with Messenger and its other properties is a big deal for businesses and their customer relationships, according to Josh Engroff, chief digital media officer at The Media Kitchen, and managing director of KBS+ Ventures.

To such an immense degree, the industry has “never really had direct communication between brands and consumers,” Engroff recently told OMMA Boston attendees. “Technology and media are at a tipping point.”

Among other features, Facebook recently rolled out Links and Codes, which are simple ways for people to begin conversations with other people and businesses by scanning a unique “code” they have been given. This can be done in-person -- standing side by side with someone -- or virtually. No prior connections are needed.

In 2015, Instagram racked up $595 million in mobile ad revenue around the globe, by eMarketer’s estimate.