WhatsApp opens up to ads: A big step in app history

After more than a decade of staying away from advertising, WhatsApp, which has more than 3 billion users, announced on June 16 that users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app. However, owner Meta Platforms said the ads will not appear in private chats.

The announcement said the ads will only appear in the app's Updates bar, which about 1.5 billion people use every day, and will not change the private messaging experience on the platform. Messages, calls, and personal statuses are end-to-end encrypted and are not used to display ads.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like age, country or city they live in, language used, channels followed in the app, and how they interact with the ads they see.

In addition to the above feature, Meta said it will also deploy two monetization features through advertising on the application, both in the Update bar. According to Meta, the deployment will be carried out in turn in countries over several months.

The launch of ads on the messaging app is a major step in CEO Zuckerberg's plan to turn WhatsApp into the "next chapter" in the company's history, as he has said, by 2022.

It's a big change for a company that was created in 2009 with a pledge by its founders to keep the platform ad-free. Facebook bought WhatsApp in 2014, and the original WhatsApp founders left a few years later. Parent company Meta Platforms Inc. has long tried to monetize WhatsApp.

Unlike WhatsApp, most of Meta's revenue comes from advertising. In 2025, the Menlo Park, California-based company's revenue will total $164.5 billion, of which $160.6 billion will come from advertising./.

(TTXVN/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/whatsapp-mo-cua-quang-cao-buoc-tien-lon-trong-lich-su-ung-dung-post1044736.vnp