WhatsApp is introducing advertisements. Meta said in an update on Monday that it will now display business advertisements via its Stories-like status feature which will now begin displaying advertisements on the well-known chat app after years of offering free services with no extras. To be clear, the app’s version of Instagram Stories, the Status screen, is where users will only view advertisements.
Users can share disappearing text, photo, voice note, or video messages using WhatsApp’s status function, which is located under the “Updates” page. However, in addition to updates posted by friends and family, you may now see sponsored content.
You will therefore see advertisements on WhatsApp after scrolling through a few Status updates, much like you would after viewing a few Instagram stories.
For years, Meta had been thinking about adding advertising to WhatsApp, a move that its founders strongly opposed. WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart acknowledged in 2023 that the business was still working on an implementation, despite Meta reversing plans to introduce in-app advertisements in 2020. Meta earned almost $160 billion in ad revenue last year.
According to the firm, its ad technique makes use of information from advertising that users interact with as well as indications like the user’s language, country or city, and the channels they are following.
According to Meta, it does not use personally identifying information to display targeted advertisements, including user phone numbers, messages, calls, and groups. When a user adds their WhatsApp account to Meta’s Account Center, the company will display advertisements based on their account choices.
According to the company, it would enable certain creators and businesses to charge users a subscription to get exclusive updates on Channels, and it will allow individuals and businesses to advertise their Channels, WhatsApp’s broadcast function, in the discovery section. According to the corporation, app shops will handle these subscription fees.
According to Meta, more than 1.5 billion individuals use Channels and Status every day.
Thus far, WhatsApp has made money through click-to-WhatsApp advertisements and its WhatsApp Business platform. In its most recent quarterly conference calls, Meta has made repeated references to these as expanding revenue streams.
In a conference, Alice Newton Rex, vice president of product at WhatsApp, stated that advertisements are a logical progression of the app’s revenue sources.
Now that both of those firms have grown to the point where they can assist users in finding businesses directly within WhatsApp, the new advertisements and promotion offerings felt like the next logical step. And businesses were telling us more and more that they wanted to do the same thing,” she said.
According to WhatsApp, these features and advertisements will be available everywhere in the upcoming months.
According to Meta, it will use “limited” information, such as your language, country or locality, the channels you follow, and how you engage with platform ads, to customize the ads to your interests. If you have chosen to use Meta’s Accounts Center, you can also modify your ad preferences there.
In its update, Meta states, “We’ve been discussing our plans for years to create a business that doesn’t interfere with your private conversations, and we think the Updates tab is the right place for these new features to work.” In addition to stating that it “will never sell or share your phone numbers to advertisers,” the company also states that it will not utilize your calls, messages, or groups to inform its advertisements.
Meta is changing WhatsApp in more ways than one. Additionally, when you click on the Explore option to locate new channels to follow, the corporation will begin displaying promoted channels. Additionally, it is introducing the option to “receive exclusive updates” by subscribing to channels.
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