When Facebook bought WhatsApp Messenger in 2014, the annual fee was abolished and a strict advertising-free policy was adopted. That is now changing.
WhatsApp is one of the largest social networks in the world, with around 1.5 billion users who send over 60 billion messages every day. The messenger is, just like Instagram, part of the Facebook empire. In terms of money, the service has not yet brought in any revenue.
How Status Ads Work
In November of last year, WhatsApp Vice President Chris Daniels announced the introduction of advertising within the status function at an event in New Delhi. The feature boasts more than 450 million daily active users, about twice as many as Snapchat. It's hardly surprising, then, that Facebook wants to monetize this feature. Initially, the ads will only appear between individual status messages in portrait format. Private chats will not be affected. A launch date has also finally been announced—it's set to begin in 2020. The company confirmed this at the Facebook Marketing Summit in Rotterdam.
