WhatsApp is moving forward with a plan to add ads to its popular chat platform, the company confirmed on Wednesday.
Chris Daniels, WhatsApp’s recently minted vice-president, announced the move in an interview with Outlook India.
“We are going to be putting ads in ‘Status,'” said Daniels. “This is going to be [the] primary monetisation mode for the company as well as an opportunity for businesses to reach people on WhatsApp.”
The Status section of WhatsApp is the chat platform’s take on Instagram Stories. Using the section, WhatsApp users can share content like images and videos that then disappear after 24 hours. Daniels did not specify when users can expect to see ads appear in the Status section. However, it’s likely they’ll start appearing sometime early next year.
WhatsApp has come a long way since 2012 when it published a blog post titled “Why we don’t sell ads“. In the post, then company CEO Jan Koum wrote passionately about why he and co-founder Brian Action did not plan to add ads to their platform. “Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product,” Koum writes in one sentence.
Of course, with Koum leaving WhatsApp earlier this year, the writing has been on the wall for several months now. The question then is just how many ads Facebook plans to add to the platform.
Source: Outlook India
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