A move the industry saw coming is now unwrapping.
WhatsApp messaging app will soon be showing adverts to users. Facebook bought WhatsApp back in 2014 and the company wasn’t allowed to monetize the platform for at least 5 years because of a clause in the contract with the founders, Brian Acton and Jan Koum.
With years concluded now, it’s expected the messaging will go live with ads in 2020. This was confirmed at Facebook’s annual Facebook Marketing Summit, with slides showing how the ads will look within the app. Olivier Ponteville who was attending the summit shared a screenshot which shows the ads.
Just like on Instagram stories, the ads will be displayed on Status posts with the name of the business advertising.
Coming Soon to @WhatsApp…
– WhatsApp Status (Stories) to get Ads in 2020
– WhatsApp for Businesses to get richer messaging format options
– WhatsApp product catalog to be integrated with existing Facebook Business Manager catalog
h/t + 📸 @Olivier_Ptv
at #FMS19 pic.twitter.com/Z5LsbADNbP— Matt Navarra (@MattNavarra) May 21, 2019
In an interview with Forbes, Brian Acton reveals that he has been pressured by Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to monetize WhatsApp. He further reveals that Facebook had decided to start using WhatsApp to make money by showing targeted ads in the new Status feature.
But it seems the end-to-end encryption which which was implemented back in 2016 will be seduced.
With ads implemented, user data will be used for targeted ads, and business users will be included and that will require analytics tool to businesses – meaning user data is collected.
We will get to see how this plan works for Facebook and how it will affect users.
source: BGR
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