As confirmed by Vice President Chris Daniels on Wednesday, WhatsApp will soon start showing ads in Status. Facebook has been reportedly working on ways to monetize WhatsApp for months now and this also led to the exit of WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton from Facebook.
We are going to be putting ads in Status.- Chris Daniels, Vice President at WhatsApp
However, there is no timeline for this development that has been in the news for some time. The feature could be seen as a great opportunity for Facebook to monetize WhatsApp and could be a repetition of how Instagram shows ads in its Status to users.
WhatsApp launched Status feature early last year and has been a hit among users. The mentioned Status feature allows users to share text, photos, videos, and animated GIFs that disappear after 24 hours. Several previous reports have pointed out that the advertisements would be powered by Facebook’s native advertising system and would be aimed at helping users understand and participate in businesses using the messaging app.
WhatsApp 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.
As said by Brian Acton to Forbes recently that Zuckerberg was in a rush to make money from the messaging service and undermine elements of its encryption technology. Four years after its acquisition by Facebook for $19 billion, WhatsApp, now plans to carry targeted ads from 2019 on a platform that has been ad-free till date.
