Facebook has ads. Instagram has ads. And it appears WhatsApp isn’t safe, either, because it too is about to get ads.
Crank up the money-making machine for Meta, because it is about to get a little bit bigger. You deal with an assortment of regular (and likely unwanted) ads across Facebook and Instagram, now prepare to endure a few on WhatsApp, as well.
It’s less than ideal news for folks who rely on Meta’s messaging service, which has for the most part been left untainted by advertising, even if it did get a dose of AI last year when the maker of Facebook pushed artificial intelligence on all of its apps and services at once.
WhatsApp has pretty much been a messaging godsend for travellers and families keen to use data for texts and calls in place of actual SMS and voice, allowing to app to do the job a phone’s telco service normally handles, but with data. Given that data can be accessed using free WiFi — as opposed to paying for it using a telco — travelling with WhatsApp can make life a little easier for people.
But if you frequent the “Updates” tab and look at either channels or status, you’re about to see something a little unexpected: ads.
Specifically, the 1.5 billion people that use WhatsApp daily will find promoted channels in the former and ads in the latter, while subscriptions to channels may cost a monthly fee.
Yes, like all Meta products, it’s the beginning of ads on the platform, even though the company says your phone number is never shared or sold to advertisers, and your personal messages and calls not used to determine which ads you see.
That may come as little comfort for folks who liked that WhatsApp has been ad-free since its inception, and probably admired it being a place they could go for messaging sans-ads. It’s very likely only just the beginning, too, so we won’t be terribly surprised if Meta starts injecting advertising at the top of our WhatsApp message feed in the months and years to come.
