Menu Menu
[gtranslate]

WhatsApp introduces ads into its feed for the first time

After teasing possible advertisement placements for several years, Meta has finally launched an update on WhatsApp that will roll the feature out publicly. Businesses will be able to display ads in the ‘updates’ tab.

The popular text-based messaging platform WhatsApp now features business advertisements for the first time.

As part of an update this week, parent company Meta announced that companies can now place ads in the ‘updates’ tab, where users normally share text, photos, videos or voice notes in much the same way as Instagram Stories.

Similarly to Instagram, users will now see sponsored posts in between updates shared from friends and contacts.

This news is unlikely to go down well with consumers, particularly as every other platform is seemingly cluttered with sponsored content and targeted advertisements. Interestingly, one of the apps original founders Jan Koum was completely against the idea, strongly denouncing corporate ads back in 2014 in an interview with Forbes.

‘Dealing with ads is depressing,’ said Koum. ‘You don’t make anyone’s life better by making advertisements work better.’

Eleven years on, and Meta is earning an eye-watering $160 billion USD on ad revenue every year. It was confirmed in 2023 that WhatsApp would be experimenting with the feature after previously rolling back this idea in 2020.

Meta will be acutely aware that it can’t overdo it with its sponsored placements, at least for now. WhatsApp is a huge platform with over 2.78 billion unique users, but it found that success through being simple, clean, and purpose-driven.

It is not like, say, Instagram or Facebook, where users regularly post updates about their lives publicly.

The app is predominantly a peer-to-peer messaging service, making it far harder to monetise compared to Meta’s other products.

According to the tech firm, WhatsApp will display relevant, tailored ads based on ‘limited’ information which includes your geographic location, language, and the different channels you follow within the app.

These preferences can be changed from the Meta Account Centre too, should you want to personalise your experience.

It’s worth pointing out that these advertisements are only on the updates tab – they will not feature on your messages screen, nor will Meta sell your phone number and texts to advertisers.

Of course, given the countless privacy scandals that the company has fallen into over the years, it can be hard to take that at face value. Still, Meta’s claims seem legitimate for now, and the core experience with your contacts and messages remains unchanged.

As commenters have also pointed out, most people don’t currently use the updates tab on WhatsApp, and it’s likely that most users will simply miss all the advertisements anyway.

This could tempt Meta to make them more invasive over time, but we’ll have to see whether that happens in the next few years or not. For now, things are strictly changing on the updates tab. Maybe it will stay that way?

Accessibility