It is happening. It is finally happening. Facebook is gearing up to bring ads to WhatsApp. According to a report by Business Today, Facebook will soon release an update for WhatsApp which will enable ads in the status section of the popular messaging app.
Facebook is going back on its promise it made while buying WhatsApp back in 2012. It had promised to not alter the business model of the uber-popular messaging app and bombard it with ads. Vice President of WhatsApp first dropped this bombshell back in November 2018, saying they will be introducing ‘status ads’ in the app pretty soon:
“We are going to be putting ads in ‘Status’. That is going to be the primary monetization model for the company as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp.”
WhatsApp users were naturally disappointed with this decision as no one likes their primary mode of communication plagued with unsavory ads.
With the new year, Facebook is also gearing up to launch an update which will enable ads in the status section. It will work similar to Instagram, where browsing through stories of people that you follow can sometime show a sponsored post.
This is certainly annoying for some people and will ruin the clean and distraction-free experience that users love about WhatsApp. We had hoped that Facebook might change its mind after some recent nightmares regarding selling user data to companies, but it seems that WhatsApp monetization is still very much in Facebook’s plans.
