Ads Arrive on WhatsApp: Meta Launches Advertising and Subscription Features in the Messaging Network.

Meta has always seen the penetration of WhatsApp as a significant business opportunity. However, the leading messaging app generates little revenue since it operates for free and has stayed away from advertising. Now, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg, owner of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it will begin selling ads and subscriptions on the platform, although these will appear in statuses and channels while respecting, at least for now, the chats. Meta says that WhatsApp will gradually introduce these new features over the coming months.

The company has been contemplating entering the advertising business for years, but the initiative has been postponed repeatedly. Ads will appear in the Updates tab, a section of the app separate from the inbox and private conversations. It features user status updates, WhatsApp’s version of disappearing stories, which will now include ads and channels to follow. People and businesses use the status to share photos, videos, voice notes, and text with mutual contacts that last for 24 hours.

“The Updates tab is where you discover new content on WhatsApp, whether it’s a friend’s status on their wedding day or an entertaining channel from a creator, and now 1.5 billion people use it daily worldwide. Now, the Updates tab will help channel administrators, organizations, and businesses grow and develop,” Meta stated while announcing its initiative.

WhatsApp aims to increase its revenue through three different avenues. First, it will introduce subscriptions to channels, including news outlets, businesses, sports clubs, and users, allowing subscribers to receive exclusive updates for a monthly fee. Initially, the company will not take any of these subscriptions, but it plans to charge 10% of them in the future, according to Alice Newton Rex, WhatsApp’s product vice president, who spoke to Bloomberg.

Second, it will launch promoted channels, which will allow channel administrators of all types to increase their visibility in exchange for payment. These first two initiatives complement each other: a channel can pay Meta to promote itself in the directory to gain subscribers.

The third initiative is advertising in user statuses, directly with ads. “You’ll be able to discover a new business and easily start a conversation with them about a product or service they are promoting in Status,” the company says. The ads will be similar to those appearing in Instagram Stories: they will appear interspersed and can be dismissed or clicked for more information.

Meta emphasizes that subscriptions, promotions, and ads will only appear in the Updates tab, separate from personal chats. “This means that if you only use WhatsApp to chat with your friends and loved ones, your experience will not change at all,” it asserts.

User Data

The company claims that the new features have been designed “in the most privacy-oriented way possible.” Personal messages, calls, and statuses continue to be end-to-end encrypted, meaning no one can see or hear them, not even Meta, it claims.

Meta assures that it will never sell or share users’ phone numbers with advertisers and that personal messages, calls, and groups with WhatsApp users will not be used to determine the ads that appear to them.

This does not mean that WhatsApp will not use some user data. “To show ads in statuses or channels that may interest you, we will use limited information, such as your country or city, your language, the channels you follow, and how you interact with the ads you see. For those who have chosen to add WhatsApp to the Accounts Center, we will also use your ad preferences and information from your Meta accounts,” it explains.

Meta has spent years slowly developing a business to accompany the private messaging service acquired for $19 billion in 2014. Advertising had never previously been considered a good option due to the privacy of a private messaging inbox. Its founder, Jan Koum, stated in 2014 that since the company’s inception, they were clear that “incorporating advertising would be very negative,” but it has been seven years since he left the company.

Instead, Meta created WhatsApp to cater to small businesses, including efforts to develop digital payment and shopping features. These services have particularly targeted countries outside the United States, like India and Brazil, where WhatsApp is the dominant messaging app, as well as in Spain.