WhatsApp is one of the most downloaded apps of 2019, as per a recently published Sensor Tower report. The app has over 1.5 billion active users worldwide and is free to download. A previous report suggested that Facebook has been trying to come up with ways to monetise the app and one of the solutions it came up with was to introduce ads in the app. However, as per a new report by The Wall Street Journal, via The Verge, the company is apparently ditching the idea of integrating ads into the app, at least for now.
As per the report, there was a dedicated team that was working on building a codebase that would enable ad integration with WhatsApp. This team was apparently disbanded in recent months and their work was “deleted from WhatsApp’s code.” While this comes as good news for all WhatsApp users, it should be noted that Facebook is planning to integrate ads into WhatsApp’s Status feature, the report states. This is in-line with a previous report that claimed the same. WhatsApp Vice President, Chris Daniels said, “We are going to be putting ads in 'Status'. That is going to be primary monetisation mode for the company as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp.”
There is still no information on when WhatsApp might actually start rolling out ads within the app. Because the company decided to introduce ads within the app, WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum bowed out of Facebook back in 2018 and just months later WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton too quit the company. In a conversation with Forbes, Acton previously said that Zuckerberg was in a rush to make money from the messaging service and undermine elements of its encryption technology. "Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy," Acton said.