Meta Platforms has started showing ads on WhatsApp. This is the first time ads will appear in the app. Meta hopes this will bring new income as it invests more in artificial intelligence and other big projects.
The ads will appear in the Updates tab of WhatsApp. This tab is different from private chats. It includes Status which is like short stories that disappear. Status will now carry ads. This section gets around 1.5 billion visitors each day.
Advertisers can also pay to promote their Channels. These Channels allow brands or celebrities to share posts with followers. These posts look like group messages. Channels will get more visibility through paid promotion.
WhatsApp will also let Channel owners offer paid subscriptions. This means some messages will only go to paying followers. Meta will not take a share of this income at first. Later it plans to take 10 percent of the sales. This was confirmed by Alice Newton Rex who is the vice president of product at WhatsApp.
Meta is spending a lot of money on artificial intelligence. This includes work to improve its language tools. It recently agreed to spend 14.3 billion dollars to buy a big part of Scale AI. This is a company that helps train AI using labeled data. These costs have increased the need to grow Meta's ad business.
WhatsApp was bought by Meta in 2014 for 19 billion dollars. Since then Meta has slowly tried to earn money from the app. Ads were never used before because private messages felt too personal. Instead Meta added tools for small businesses. These tools help with payments and shopping. They are popular in countries like India and Brazil.
Digital payments had not developed quickly. Laws have complications. Nevertheless, Meta is able to gain much through click to click message advertisements. These ads are deployed to Facebook and Instagram landing users on WhatsApp chats. The business too can automatically communicate to users who voluntarily accepted to be communicated with.
Privacy has proved to be one of the challenges facing meta. Messages on WhatsApp are completely encrypted. The founders of the app have in the past made commitments that they will never expose the app to advertisements. They abandoned Meta years back.
WhatsApp ads will be grounded on general information. This also comprises the location language and followed Channels. Meta will not make use of Facebook and Instagram data without connecting their accounts.
Newton Rex indicated that personal messages will not get display of ads. They will not be visible to people who use WhatsApp to make chat and call purposes only.
This week, the world-wide ad release begins. Before everyone can start using them it will probably take some time.
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