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Meta is introducing paid advertising to WhatsApp, as the Big Tech group cashes in on the world’s most popular messaging service.
On Monday, WhatsApp, which counts 200mn businesses among its more than 3bn monthly active users, said it would roll out the new feature globally over the next few months.
The ads will appear in the Status section of the messaging service, visible through the Updates tab on the left of the app screen, so keeping them separate from the main chat conversation area.
“This was a longtime request that we had from businesses, and they care about preserving people’s personal spaces,” said Nikila Srinivasan, vice-president of business messaging at WhatsApp.
The Financial Times first reported that parent company Meta was discussing how to introduce an advertising model into WhatsApp in 2023. At the time, Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, said the report was “false. We aren’t doing this.”
Before WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook for $19bn in 2014, its co-founder Brian Acton had made “No ads! No games! No gimmicks!” a company mantra.
The group said the decision to break from that long-standing position was due to there now being “a space” for advertising that would not interfere with personal chats.
“People want to use WhatsApp for more than messaging close friends and family, and looking back a year and a half ago, that is part of the reason we introduced this Updates tab . . . If you’re someone that uses WhatsApp for personal messaging and you never come to this tab, you won’t see [advertising],” Srinivasan added.
In April, Meta reported better than expected results, shrugging off investor concerns that US President Donald Trump’s tariffs policy and related economic uncertainty could significantly knock Meta’s advertising business.
Rolling out ads on WhatsApp will help Meta boost its revenues further, enabling the US tech giant to monetise one of its few platforms still devoid of marketing.
Alice Newton-Rex, WhatsApp’s director of product, previously told the FT that WhatsApp statuses were “the world’s most used stories product”. They allow users to post images that disappear after 24 hours. The Updates tab attracts 1.5bn users daily, the company said.
WhatsApp will also introduce the ability to subscribe to Channels, streams of exclusive content from creators, for a monthly fee. Certain Channels, such as those from small businesses or brands, can also pay to be promoted in a feed of different accounts.
The company said messages, calls and statuses would remain end-to-end encrypted, which means that only the sender and receiver are able to access the content.
However, WhatsApp added that it would use basic information such as the user’s location, device language, which channels they are following and how they interact with marketing, to determine which adverts to serve.
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