Facebook-owned WhatApp will start showing advertisements in the status feature of the messaging app.
WhatsApp Vice President, Chris Daniels has said that the company will start showing advertisements in the chat service's Status tab. Daniels has 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 no information available as to when users will start seeing advertisements on WhatsApp and how these ads will be regulated. Information about advertisements appearing on WhatsApp has been rumoured for quite some time now. To put things into perspective, WhatsApp has 1.5 billion users globally of which more than 250 million users are in India.
For those unaware, Status is WhatsApp’s take on Instagram stories. You can post a status, image, etc. for your friends to see. Status updates are visible to your friends for 24 hours. After that, the status disappears.
If you are not happy with advertisements on WhatsApp, then know that neither are the co-founders. In a conversation with Forbes, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton, 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.
This isn’t the first time WhatsApp is looking to cash in on their user base. Daniels told Economic Times, "Currently, we're approaching monetisation in two ways. In August, we launched the WhatsApp Business API, which enables large companies like MakeMyTrip to send information like tickets to users on WhatsApp. Businesses pay to send those messages. In the future, we'll place ads in WhatsApp Status, which is our Stories feature. We think this is an appropriate place for ads within WhatsApp. WhatsApp will remain free for people to use and we remain fully committed to end-to-end encryption. With our full set of features in place for both people and businesses, we believe WhatsApp will continue to contribute to economic growth here in India."
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