Well, it finally happened. Ads are officially coming to WhatsApp. Not that we’re altogether surprised. We, and plenty of others, have been awaiting this day ever since Meta (then Facebook) acquired the messenger in 2014, although a decade later, we did hope that Meta might leave this one facet of its business untapped and pure.
That was… naive. Despite the various teasers that advertisements were headed to WhatsApp over the years, we still fell victim to the idea of a truly free social media. That’s no longer possible after Meta announced today that ads, alongside new features like channel subscriptions and promoted channels, were headed to the app soon.
It’s free and always will be
Meta, preparing to face the inevitable backlash, makes it clear that these ads will be locked to the ‘Updates’ tab on the bottom of your screen and will not infiltrate your personal chats. In theory, this means you can go your entire life without seeing an ad inside WhatsApp. That is, until Meta has a change of heart and invites them inside the rest of the app. But we’re keeping our hopes high for the moment.
“These new features will appear only on the Updates tab, away from your personal chats. This means if you only use WhatsApp to chat with friends and loved ones there is no change to your experience at all,” it said. “We’ve been talking about our plans to build a business that does not interrupt your personal chats for years and we believe the Updates tab is the right place for these new features to work.”
These ads, should you ever interact with them, will use “limited info” about you to curate them, like your country, city, language, the Channels you follow, and how you interact with other ads. If you’ve already linked WhatsApp to the Meta Accounts Centre, WhatsApp will draw info from there about what it can and cannot show you. Meta claims it will never sell your phone number to advertisers, and that your messages remain encrypted.
Read More: AI-generated summaries of your private chats are headed to WhatsApp
This is the company that made Facebook; however. It’s probably best to tread carefully going forward, particularly if you’re keen to keep your information private. It’s still unclear how these ads will be displayed, but it seems as though they will be sprinkled in among your friends and family’s Status updates — images and text updates that disappear 24 hours after posting. Think Instagram Story ads, and you’ve got the general idea.
Also coming to the app is the ability for Channel admins to spend some dough on promoting their Channels, making them more likely to be seen by unsuspecting customers browsing the Updates tab. Or, some Channels can paywall their content, forcing interested users to cough up a monthly fee in exchange for access.
WhatsApp doesn’t specifically mention when these changes will arrive, though we can safely assume they’re headed our way sooner rather than later. As of this morning, our app has not shown the changes, and we’re hoping turning off auto-update will be enough to counter them. For now.
