Reversing its ad-free strategy that has been in use since the company was launched, WhatsApp has revealed that it will soon be introducing advertising capabilities within its platform in a major strategic change.
The messaging platform owned by Meta will start introducing new monetisation features to its Updates tab, which is the place where Channels and Status are offered to more than 1.5 billion people daily.
The modifications are the most aggressive move of WhatsApp so far to monetise, as the pressure to use the service with over two billion monthly active users grows.
Ever since WhatsApp was acquired by Meta in 2014, the application has avoided conventional methods of advertising, unlike other related apps such as Facebook and Instagram. Personal chats will not be affected by these changes since they will be confirmed by the platform.
Monetisation features
Anyone who does not use Status or Channels will not experience any change; all ads will be restricted to the Updates tab. The most important thing is that even the Updates tab can be disabled in the settings, guaranteeing the absence of ads to those, who choose to run ad-free version.
WhatsApp said that it has spent years building its model of protecting the privacy of conversations, and it does not want to undermine that commitment and believes that the Updates tab provides the correct home to those new functions.
The introduced monetisation features are the offering of paid subscription to Channels and the featuring of Channels in the Discovery menu, and advertisement appended to the Status feature of WhatsApp, the equivalent of Instagram Stories.
Roll out in phases
The Vice President of Product Management at Meta, Nikila Srinivasan, ensured the users that the issue of privacy is part and parcel of the ethos of the platform.
“I need to make this very clear, your status, personal messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted. Nobody, including us, can read them or listen to them, and they will never be used as advertisement sources,” she said.
She also made it clear the platform will not be selling and sharing phone numbers of the users and sharing activity of the private messaging facilities with advertisers, to use the knowledge as an insight of the ad targeting.
Rather, the advertisements will be served upon the general information about country or city of users, the language of their device and the behaviour they demonstrated in the tab called Updates.
This is the first time that WhatsApp has fully introduced ad opportunities into the interface as previously it has conducted minimal testing of ads in the form of Status ads and messages in WhatsApp Business in addition to promoting what is referred to as template messages.
People in the industry have speculated over the years as to whether or not Meta will monetise WhatsApp with more vigour because of its unrivalled global penetration rates and user stickiness.
Although the company has not provided any timeline, it has assured that the roll out will be in phases in the months ahead.
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