Destination, advertising arrives on WhatsApp, for the first time: here’s how it will appear

February 2014Mark Zuckerberg announces thePurchase of WhatsApp For $ 22 billion: a free messaging app used at the time by 450 million people. It points to billion users and promises that « nothing will change ».

April 2018: Users are more than one and a half billion. Jan KoumWhatsApp’s co-founder who had entered Facebook (today a destination) after the acquisition, he resigns banging the door later – he trapped at the time – to discussions on the possibility of introducing advertising into the app. The other co-founder, Brian Acton, also left for the same reason.

June 2025: here we are, Zuck Porta Advertising on WhatsApp. The first monetization program within the app used by 3 billion people worldwide involves the introduction of sponsorships exclusively in the Updates section. « Chat, calls and personal states are therefore excluded which are protected with end-to-end encryption. Privacy remains at the center, « Nikila Srinivasan, global manager for business messaging in destination, was keen to underline, during a presentation to journalists.

To understand what we are talking about, we need to think about WhatsApp as a a small (so to speak) social media: half of his users, 1.5 billion people, when he opens the app select the updates item at least once a day. Not to chat with friends, colleagues and relatives, therefore, but for Browse the states of his contacts (a copy of the Instagram stories) e navigate between the novelties of the channels (Feed of companies, brands or people with unidirectional communication).
And this is where Meta introduces between paid opportunities: 1) advertisements between one state update and another, as happens for the sponsored stories of Instagram; 2) The channels that offer content on subscription (and destination later will introduce a 10% commission); 3) The promotion of a channel to give it greater visibility and make it discover by as many people as possible. The goal of Meta is to create a virtuous circle of clicks and visibility that has as its ultimate goal the opening of a dialogue between the user and the advertiser.

One step in this direction had already been accomplished outside WhatsApp, with the possibility of buying Ads on Facebook and Instagram Which, once clicking, open a chat in the messaging app. The possibility of integrate WhatsApp in their systems to manage conversations with customers.

Meta does not provide precise information on the value of these activities, but the item of the first quarter of 2025 to be viewed is that « other revenues » of the Family of Apps division: 510 million dollars of revenuegrowing 34% compared to the previous year, thanks to WhatsApp Business and the accounts verification program (the « blue check »).

Zuck now accelerates and makes the jump that had been meditating for some time because – his words in the call with investors and analysts of April – «The company messaging should become The next pillar of our business. In countries such as Thailand and Vietnam, where the cost of labor is low, we see many companies carry out commercial activities through our messaging apps. In developed countries, the cost of labor is too high to make this profitable model before AI, but the AI ​​should solve the problem « .

In this case, it refers to chat interactions, but it is interesting to reread these words in the light of the fact that another of the objectives of the CEO of Meta is to automate completely the creation and distribution of advertising campaigns on its platforms thanks to artificial intelligence: by the end of next year, according to sources asked by Wall Street Journal.

Returning to the news relating to WhatsApp – the gradual release starts on Monday -, respect and concerns relating to privacy are central. THE user data Used to direct advertising will be cities, language and interactions with other ads and channels. In the event that the user has connected his account to Facebook and Instagram, the information obtained through the two social networks will also be used to show personalized ads.