When Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2024, the messaging app had a clear focus. No ads, no games, and no gimmicks, The New York Times reported.
For years, that is what WhatsApp’s two billion users — many of them in Brazil, India, and other countries around the world — got. They chatted with friends and family unencumbered by advertising and other features found on social media.
On Monday, WhatsApp said it would start showing ads inside its app for the first time. The promotions will appear only in an era of the app called Updates, which is used by around 1.5 billion people a day. WhatsApp will collect some data on users to target the ads, such as location and the devices default language, but it will not touch the contents of messages or whom users speak with. The company added that it has no plans to place ads in chats and personal messages.
“Thinking through the lens of privacy was incredibly important for how we though about bringing in these features to market,” said Nikila Srinivasan, a vice president of product management at WhatsApp. “Your personal message, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted.
CNBC reported: It WhatsApp, marking a major change for an app whose founders shunned advertising.
Meta announced Monday that businesses will now be ablate run so-called status ads on WhatsApp that prompt users to interact with the advertisers via the app’s messaging features. The ads will only be shown to users within WhatsApp’s “Updates” tab to separate the promotions from people’s personal conversations. Additionally, Meta will begin monitoring WhatsApp’s Channels feature through search ads and subscriptions.
The debut of ads on the messaging app represents a significant step in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s plants make WhatsApp “the next chapter” in his company’s history, as he told CNBC’s Jim Cramer in 2022. The move to monetize WhatsApp also comes amid Meta’s high-profile antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission over the company’s blockbuster acquisitions of the messaging app and Instagram.
BBC reported: WhatsApp is launching three new ad features in a global roll-out across the messaging app.
The Meta-owned platform says that new ads will not be shown in the same place as people’s private chats, nor will the contents of their messages – which are encrypted – be used to decide which ads to display.
WhatsApp will instead use the country, city and language of the user, as well as how they interact with other ads and which channels they follow, to drive suggested content.
But people who have chosen to link their WhatsApp account to Facebook or Instagram will see more personalized ads.