Oh no! WhatsApp to begin showing ads in 2020

WhatsApp, the world’s biggest instant messaging service with over 1.2 billion active users will begin displaying ads in the Status page in 2020. With this change, Facebook is also providing advertisers with the capability to redirect users from Facebook and Instagram to WhatsApp. These are the changes that will be made to the social media platforms for better integration across all three services.

As detailed by 9to5Mac, WhatsApp until now was a free service and it generated revenue through its business users. WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook is hoping to attract more business to its platform by displaying ads to all of its users. While we have been expecting ads to come to WhatsApp from quite a while, this change has been finally confirmed to be taking place in 2020 as it was previewed at the Facebook Marketing Summit that was held this week.

9to5Mac states, “The ads will appear in WhatsApp Status. These are just like Stories on other platforms; they might be text, images, videos, or GIFs your friends have posted that disappear after 24 hours. Just like that other content, ads will take up the whole screen when you view them and you’ll be able to swipe up on them to find out more.”

The other changes that will be coming from Facebook will be better integration between Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp as the social media giant is giving advertisers the ability to redirect users. The website states, “When you tap on a promoted post, for instance, you might be sent to a WhatsApp chat with the retailer where you’ll be able to make an inquiry.”Facebook is also giving WhatsApp for business customers richer messaging format options along with the integration of the WhatsApp product catalogue into the Facebook Business Manager catalogue.