WhatsApp incorporates advertising into its app – Diepresse.com

WhatsApp plans to integrate advertising into its smartphone app in the future. Advertisements are to be switched in the « News » section, where the company can be accessed on subscribed channels and the status displays of other WhatsApp contacts, as the company explained on Monday. WhatsApp, which has been part of the meta group since 2014, emphasized that for users who only use the service for private conversations, nothing will change.

Unlike the platforms Facebook and Instagram, which are also part of Meta, there is no advertising on WhatsApp. The Facebook group took over WhatsApp ten years ago for $ 19 billion. Since then it has been speculated whether and how Meta would try to use the enormous number of users of the service.

Criticism by NoyB data protection officers

For the online advertising at WhatsApp Meta, the user data of the other two services, among other things, emphasized, emphasized the None of Your Business (NOYB, « NOTHING ») by civil rights activist Max Schrems. « Meta does exactly the opposite of what prescribes EU law, » said Schrems. « Without voluntary consent, the linking of the data and personalized advertising is clearly illegal. » He announced that he will take legal action against Meta.

NOYB had reached a judgment of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) last year, which META prohibits the processing of certain personal user data. The data protection officers also appealed to the group’s subscription model, in which users have to pay fees for an ad-free variant of Facebook and Instagram.

Two billion users worldwide every month

WhatsApp is extremely popular as a encrypted communication instrument. According to the company, more than two billion people worldwide use the app per month. The introduction of advertising is correspondingly delicate. In 2023, WhatsApp categorically rejected a report that Meta wanted to incorporate advertisements in which Messenger wanted to install.

« I would like to say one thing very clearly: Your personal news, calls and status messages remain encrypted at the end, » emphasized Nikila Srinivasan from Meta. « That means that nobody, not even we, can see or hear them, and they cannot be used for advertising. » Also, WhatsApp will not sell telephone numbers to advertisers and do not use personal messages, calls and group memberships to personalize advertisements.

For the future advertisements in the « acute » rider, « fundamental information such as your country or your city, the language of your device and your activities within the tab » News « would be used.