It’s been a long time coming – seven years since Meta first announced its intention to do so – but starting Monday, ads are starting to appear on WhatsApp. They will only be visible in the Updates tab, and the company claims that those who only use the app to communicate with family and friends won’t really notice any changes in their WhatsApp experience. The same goes for the other two new features: channel subscriptions and channel promotion. “We’ve talked for years about our plans to build a business that doesn’t interrupt your personal chats, and we believe the Updates tab is the right place for these new features to work,” the company said in a blog post.
WhatsApp users will be able to communicate with businesses that use the Status tab to advertise a product or service, Meta reports. The company says it will use some user data to target ads, including your device language, country or city, the channels you follow, and how you interact with ads. If you have added WhatsApp to Meta’s Account Center, the company will use your advertising preferences and information from all of your Meta accounts. Meta says it will not sell or share your phone number with marketers. It also won’t use your chats, calls, and status to target ads – they’ll still be end-to-end encrypted.
The Status tab is a valuable screen space. According to Meta, more than 1.5 billion people use it every day. Advertising is still the company’s biggest revenue stream, so the only thing that’s really surprising about Meta starting to show ads on WhatsApp is that it took so long. After all, the company probably could have had more ways to make enough money to support the parts of the business that may take a long time to turn a profit, if they ever get to that point.
