Meta-owned WhatsApp starts in-app ads for first time
1 of 2 | On Monday, billions of WhatsApp users around the world will see business ads in its "updates" tab as parent comapny Meta begins to monetize the WhatsApp "channels" feature with paid subscriptions and search advertising. File Photo by Hayoung Jeon/EPA-EFE
June 16 (UPI) -- The messaging service WhatsApp on Monday will begin to display ads for the first time as parent company Meta seeks to make business changes to the encrypted global platform.
Billions of international users of the popular messaging app will see business ads in its "updates" tab as Meta begins to monetize the WhatsApp "channels" feature with paid subscriptions and search advertising. In addition, business will have the option to run "status ads" that prompt a WhatsApp user to interact with advertisers on messenger.
Officials say, however, that WhatsApp will only collect limited private data used to target ads.
"Your personal messages, calls and statuses, they will remain end-to-end encrypted," Nikila Srinivasan, Meta and WhatsApp's VP of product management, told The New York Times.
There are no current plans for ads to be in private chats.
Meta, the global social media giant at one time known as Facebook when it purchased WhatsApp in a 2014 deal for some $19 billion, now permits advertisers to run click-to-message ads to WhatsApp via its branded subsidiary companies Instagram and Facebook.
WhatsApp has more than 3 billion monthly users, with more more than 100 million just in the United States and "growing quickly from there,' according to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
In April, Zuckerberg said its ability for users to contact businesses "should be the next pillar" of WhatsApp's business model.
But according to a company official, WhatsApp will use "very basic information" -- such as a user's home country, city, language, smart phone device or select data -- in order to pick what ads to show, but ads might cost less to place on WhatsApp versus Facebook or Instagram.
In 2024, nearly all of Meta's $164 billion revenue arrived from advertising and it holds about a 15% share of digital business advertising globally.
The advertising business for Meta-owned companies is "in as strong a position now as it's ever been," Brian Wieser, a financial analyst and founder of consulting firm Madison and Wall, told the Times.
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