Back in August, WhatsApp was reported to display ads in the Status section, and now the company’s Vice President Chris Daniels confirmed that the company is going to put advertisements in its ‘Status’ feature. This clears the air on Facebook’s monetization efforts towards WhatsApp.
This is going to be the company’s primary monetization method as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp. However, there is no timeline for this development but it has been in the news for quite some time. WhatsApp currently has over 1.5 billion users globally, including more than 250 million in India.
There were media reports earlier this month that the Facebook-owned messaging app is planning to allow advertisements to be displayed in the ‘Status’ section of the app. WhatsApp’s ‘Status’ feature allows users to share text, photos, videos, and animated GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. According to reports, the advertisements would be powered by Facebook’s native advertising system and would be aimed at helping users understand and participate in businesses using WhatsApp.
This exact reason has made WhatsApp’s co-founders leave the company. Brian Acton, who was one of the co-founder recently said that Zuckerberg was in a rush to make money from the messaging service and undermine elements of its encryption technology. “Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy.” WhatsApp will reportedly carry targeted ads from 2019 on a platform that has been ad-free till date.