Meta denies that it plans to ruin WhatsApp with ads
Meta has issued a statement defending itself against accusations that it was planning to insert in-feed ads into WhatsApp.
The report, from the Financial times, claimed that several teams at WhatsApp’s parent company Meta had evaluated the possibility of showing ads in conversation lists with contacts on the app’s home screen. In response, Meta released its own statement saying that it has not tested or tested these features and had no plans to do so at all.
FT Technology News had made similar claims and even posted an article on its Twitter/X account. It was subsequently refuted by WhatsApp head Will Cathcart in a quote retweet, stating that the story was false and that Meta does not advance such a feature. This rebuttal was then added to the original tweet as a community note.
This isn’t the first time Meta has been accused of such schemes to monetize its two billion active user base, as analysts have been predicting such a turnaround for years. This appears to be based on Meta’s other acquisition, Instagram, which has been seeing heavy advertising on its users’ feeds for years.
However, these accusations were not unfounded, at least in the past. In both 2018 and 2019, Meta had made plans to show advertisements in WhatsApp. The Wall Street Journal revealed there were plans to show ads in the messaging app’s Status feature due to declining ad revenue, while Olivier Ponteville reported on Twitter that Meta would bring Stories Ads to WhatsApp’s status product in 2020. Since then, the Wall Street Journal published one follow up story in 2020 stating that Meta was pulling back on its advertising plans and would instead look for other ways to monetize the platform.
And so far, it has already achieved great success in making money through its program WhatsApp Businessthat the Meta offers services and tools 200+ million active user base. According to TechCrunchDuring the company’s Q3 2022 earnings call, click-to-WhatsApp ads reached an annual revenue ratio of $1.5 billion, growing 80% year over year.
Meta too updated the pricing structure and post categories in June 2023 to increase WhatsApp Business revenue. This is in addition to plans to add more ways to monetize the service, such as adding a way for companies to send users personalized messages on Facebook and Instagram via the app. Or through integrate payments in the new Channels feature that launched globally in September 2023.
In other words, WhatsApp is currently making Meta a lot of money and the tech and social media giant already has more sustainable plans to generate revenue without ruining WhatsApp for it.