WhatsApp is one of the world’s most widely used instant messaging platforms available today. The stakes got significantly bigger when the messaging client was acquired by Facebook a few years ago. There were rumors doing the rounds for quite some time that Facebook will look to monetize the platform by introducing ads. A new report now indicates that Facebook may have ditched the idea.
As per the WSJ, any development work done on ads have reportedly been “deleted from WhatsApp’s code.” Instead, it is said that Facebook will introduce ads on a user’s Status, which is similar to the Stories feature on Instagram. This plan will reportedly come into place sometime in 2024, which means it could be quite a while before you see advertisements on your WhatsApp Status. Facebook hasn’t provided any additional information on this, so it’s too early to know about the scale of the rollout.
WhatsApp originally had a plan to monetize its service by charging customers 99 cents per year. The company removed the subscription altogether in 2016, so it’s been free to use since then. However, Facebook can soon expect to make some money off the messaging platform with ads. WhatsApp for Business allows businesses to reach out to their customers by paying a per-message fee, although Facebook hasn’t disclosed how much revenue it generates from this.
Frequent users of WhatsApp will be pleased to know that there will be no ads to deal with on their chat conversations. However, with the Status feature being immensely popular on the platform, Facebook can hope to churn in quite a bit of revenue with advertisements.
What do you make of this news?
Source: WSJ
Via: 9to5Google