Industry Update

Ads Are On Their Way To WhatsApp

WhatsApp’s popularity over the last few years has been unquestionable. After passing the milestone of more than one billion daily active users, there’s no denying the chat app’s strong popularity all across the globe. Now, after years of speculation, it has been officially confirmed: Facebook has finally decided to start monetising WhatsApp.

Introducing ads to WhatsApp

A few days ago, WhatsApp Vice President, Chris Daniels, confirmed something we were all expecting to happen at some point: the introduction of adverts to the increasingly popular messaging app.

Earlier this year, David Fisher, Facebook’s VP of business and marketing partnerships, announced that WhatsApp had started planning the monetisation of the app by bringing ads to the platform and allowing businesses to use it as a platform to market their products and services. However, it wasn’t exactly clear yet where and how they would be implementing this new addition to the platform.

Well, now we know! WhatsApp’s VP has revealed that Facebook-owned WhatsApp will make this possible by allowing ads to be placed inside the Status section of the app. “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,” explained Chris Daniels.

"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"

WhatsApp Status

To refresh your memory, ‘Status’ is WhatsApp’s version of ‘Stories’, the hugely popular feature present on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. The ‘Status’ tab can be found on the left side of the bottom menu, next to the ‘Calls’ tab. And just like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram Stories, users can post photos, videos and text within this section, allowing their contacts to view their latest updates before they automatically disappear after 24 hours.

At the F8 Conference back in May, Facebook actually revealed, to the surprise of many around the world, that WhatsApp’s clone of Stories, Status, had hit over 450m daily active users, easily surpassing the likes of Snapchat and others. Bearing that in mind, there is no doubt about the potential successes that advertisers can register by placing ads within these Status updates.

These ads will be added to the application alongside the WhatsApp Business API which Facebook launched back in August. WhatsApp charges these businesses for making use of their platform in order to help them reach their customers easily and efficiently.

The only question that remains unanswered is when exactly these Status ads are expected to arrive. Whilst some reports have claimed they will be launched early on next year, no official date has been confirmed as of yet. However, advertisers rest assured, WhatsApp will definitely be open to ads in the near future.

What are your thoughts about this interesting update by WhatsApp? Have you already started planning your advertising strategies for it? Let us know in the comments section below! And in case you haven’t yet, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter in order to stay up to date with our latest content, news, updates and inspirational blogs & whitepapers!