It took 11 years since Facebook acquired it for $ 19 billion, but Meta Finally, brings advertisements to WhatsApp, marking a major change for an application whose founders have avoided advertising.
Meta announced on Monday that companies could now perform so -called state announcements on WhatsApp which encourage users to interact with advertisers via application messaging features. Ads will only be displayed to users in the WhatsApp “updates” tab to separate the promotions from personal conversations from people. In addition, Meta will start to monetize the functionality of WhatsApp channels via research and search subscriptions.
The beginnings of advertisements on the messaging application represent an important step in the plans of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to make WhatsApp “the next chapter” in the history of his business, because he declared that Jim Cramer of CNBC in 2022. The move to monetize Whatsapp also came from Meta Profile High-Profile of the Federal Commercial Commission of the company’s messaging.
Already, Meta allows advertisers to execute so -called clicks on the message on Facebook and Instagram who run users to WhatsApp where they can dialogue directly with companies. Messaging between brands and consumers “should be the next pillar of our company,” Zuckerberg told analysts in April, adding that WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion monthly users, including “more than 100 million people in the United States and grow quickly”.
Businesses can now broadcast this kind of ads in WhatsApp itself. The new state advertisements appear in the Uples tab up to date with a user in the context of the “status” function of this tab which can be used to share images, videos and text that disappear after 24 hours, similar to Instagram stories.
Since Meta bought WhatsApp in 2014, the popular messaging application continued to develop worldwide. But unlike Facebook, Instagram and more recently, WhatsApp has never allowed advertising.
The co-founders of Whatsapp, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, were public in their contempt for the advertising industry, and the duo left Facebook after facing executives who were impatient to inject the application with advertising and other practices they have avoided.
The social media company does not reveal the specific sales of WhatsApp, but analysts have previously estimated that application income is between $ 500 million and $ 1 billion to billing companies for tools and services so that they can send a message to the application.
Meta “will use very basic information” to recommend announcements to display WhatsApp users, Nikila Srinivasan, META product manager for commercial messaging, said on Friday. This includes the country, city, apparatus, language and data of a person as they follow or how they interact with advertisements.
The company made its debut on WhatsApp updates in June 2023 as well as a channel functionality that accompanies it allows people and organizations to send messages and updates to dissemination to their subscribers as opposed to personal conversations. Meta will also monetize the functionality of the channels, the company announced on Monday.
Organizations and people who are channel administrators will now be able to spend money to increase the visibility of their respective channels when a person is looking for them via a directory, similar to advertisements on Apple and Google application stores.
In addition, channel administrators will be able to charge monthly subscription fees for users to access updates and exclusive content, Meta said on Meta on Meta. The company will not immediately earn money from these monthly subscription fees, but it possibly provides for a 10% reduction in these subscriptions, a spokesperson said.
Meta hopes that by limiting her new announcements to the WhatsApp updates tab, he will disrupt users as little as possible, said Srinivasan. User status updates as well as personal messages and WhatsApp calls will remain encrypted, she said.
“We really believe that the updated tab is the right place for these new features,” said Srinivasan.
