Meta brings advertising to Whatsapp
Meta is bringing advertising to the WhatsApp messaging service, marking the first time the company has attempted to monetise the platform since buying it in 2014.
The tech giant announced overnight that businesses will be able to run advertisements in the status section of the ‘updates’ tab.
The updates tab was introduced to the messaging app in June 2023, and is used both for status updates and channel messages. It is separate to the tab for personal conversations. Meta claims ‘updates’ is used by 1.5 billion people per day, globally.
“We’ve been talking about our plans to build a business that does not interrupt your personal chats for years and we believe the updates tab is the right place for these new features to work,” said Nikila Srinivasan, VP of business messaging, at Meta.
“Your personal messages, calls, and statuses remain end-to-end encrypted. What this means is that no one, not even us, can see or hear them. And they cannot be used for ads.”
In addition, Meta is introducing channel subscriptions — where users can pay a monthly fee for exclusive access to a given channel, such as a news outlet — and the ability for channels to pay to promote their feeds in the updates tab.
“Now the Updates tab is going to be able to help channel admins, organisations and businesses build and grow,” the announcement reads.
Meta played down privacy fears, assuring users “if you only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and loved ones, there will be no change to your experience at all.”
The features have been designed in “the most privacy-oriented way possible,” the company said. Limited info like country, city, and language, plus the channels a user follows, and how they interact with ads will be used to serve relevant advertising.
Personal messages, calls, and groups will not be used to determine that ads served.
Meta had allowed advertising within both Facebook and Instagram that nudges users to Whatsapp, but this is the first time it has injected advertising directly on the platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg forecast this move in April, telling analysts that messaging between brands and consumers “should be the next pillar of our business”, also confirming the app had passed the three-billion monthly user mark.
Whatsapp’s co-founders Brian Acton and Jan Koum were both vocal critics of digital advertising. They left the company, then named Facebook, in 2018 over arguments around adding advertising to the app. According to the Wall Street Journal, the pair had exit clauses in their contracts in the case of the company attempting “additional monetisation initiatives” in regards to Whatsapp.
Advertising and channel subscriptions will be rolled out “slowly over the next several months”, according to Meta, including in Australia.
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