WhatsApp Vice President, Chris Daniels at an event on Wednesday, announced that the messaging service of WhatsApp will start showing advertisements along with its Status feature. WhatsApp Vice President Chris Daniels said that the company is going to look after the facility by allowing businesses to run advertisements. He said “primary monetisation mode for the company would offer an opportunity for businesses to reach people.”
WhatsApp will start showing ads on Status section, VP Chris Daniels confirms
Likewise, the features of Instagram and Snapchat, WhatsApp also launched its Status features earlier last year. From then it became popular, even minimizing the usage of Snapchat. This status feature in WhatsApp allows you to add a combination of text, photos, and videos to your profile. Statuses are visible to your profile for 24 hours.
Chris Daniels said “Facebook will start monetising WhatsApp, and show ads in the ‘Status’ section of the app”. Facebook is going to monetise the ‘WhatsApp for Business’ app which is presently free for businesses who want to run their advertisements in the WhatsApp status. After which Facebook is going to charge from the companies. These advertisements are going to be interlinked with the advertiser’s WhatsApp profile.
WhatsApp is the world’s largest online social networking messaging application which is used by more than 200 million users in India itself. It has continued its debut as add free platform and since then it is the same but things started changing after WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014 for $19 billion.
WhatsApp CEO confirms ads in Status, announces ‘Startup Challenge’ with Invest India
Chris, on that event, spoke on promoting Indian start-up plan by the help of platforms such as partnership with Invest India. WhatsApp is providing a challenge called ‘WhatsApp Start-up Challenge’ through which five start-ups plans will be given $250,000.
The vice president, Chris Daniels did not reveal a timeline from which they are going to start running the ads on WhatsApp status but according to some reports this might arrive early or mid of next year.
Meanwhile, WhatsApp is being tested by around 100 companies, according to a recent reports of WSJ.
However, it is still not clear how advertisements will run on WhatsApp, whether it will be shown to targeted users based on their interest or it might be shown randomly to the WhatsApp users.
WhatsApp founder Brian Acton also hinted earlier this month by saying that Mark Zuckerberg is planning to monetise WhatsApp by running targeted ads. Brian Acton, who left Facebook on September 2017, told Forbes that “Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy”.
Acton also revealed that Mark Zuckerberg proposed monetising WhatsApp and should charge certain amount from the users after the free messages limit is exhausted. But Facebook Chief Security Officer, Alex Stamos, defended the company’s judgment to make income on WhatsApp. On the other hand Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg also turned down his plan.
Chief Security Officer at Facebook, Alex Stamos tweeted “Eventually, WhatsApp is going to need to generate revenue… This could come from directly charging for the service, it could come from advertising, and it could come from a WeChat-like services play. This first is very hard across countries, the latter two are complicated by E2E”, by his statement it is clear that Facebook is planning to monetize WhatsApp.
