Skip to main content

WhatsApp will start showing ads on Status section, VP Chris Daniels confirms




Brace yourself for ads on WhatsApp. Chris Daniels, Vice President of WhatsApp, on Wednesday said that the company was going to monetise the service by allowing businesses to run advertisements.

“Facebook will start monetising WhatsApp, and show ads in the ‘Status’ section of the app”, Chris Daniels said. This is also in line with Facebook’s plan to monetise the ‘WhatsApp for Business’ app which is currently free for businesses. Facebook will charge companies for running ads on the platform. These ads will be interlinked to the advertiser’s profile on WhatsApp.

Chris was speaking on the sidelines of the platform’s partnership with Invest India to promote Indian startups. WhatsApp will offer $250,000 to five startups through the ‘WhatsApp StartUp Challenge’ .

Chris did not reveal a timeline for the roll-out of the advertisements but it’s reported to arrive early next year. According to a recent WSJ report, WhatsApp is currently being tested by around 100 companies.

It’s not clear how ads on WhatsApp will function, whether they will be shown randomly to users or if they will be targeted based on users’ interests.

WhatsApp, which is the world’s largest messaging application and has over 250 million users in India, has remained ads-free platform since its debut. Things, however, started to change after Facebook acquired the company in 2014 for $19 billion.

WhatsApp founder Brian Acton, who left Facebook in September 2017, earlier this month said that Mark Zuckerberg had planned to monetise WhatsApp by serving targeted ads.

“Targeted advertising is what makes me unhappy,” Acton told Forbes.

Acton also disclosed that he had proposed monetising WhatsApp through a metered-user model wherein users are charged after a certain limit of free messages is exhausted. His plans were turned down by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Alex Stamos, Chief Security Officer at Facebook, defended the company’s decision to generate revenue on WhatsApp.

“Eventually, WhatsApp is going to need to generate revenue... This could come from directly charging for the service, it could come from advertising, it could come from a WeChat-like services play. This first is very hard across countries, the latter two are complicated by E2E,” he said.


Source:- Hindustan times

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Cannot Wait for Dark Mode on WhatsApp? Here is How to Enable it on Android and iOS

What good is an app that doesn’t do a Dark Mode these days? Facebook Messenger does it, Amazon Kindle app has it and even the next iterations of the iOS and Android operating systems are focusing extensively on the darker side of things. That does make us wonder why the details about the final release of the much-awaited Dark Mode on WhatsApp for Android and iOS devices is still not confirmed. The most popular instant messaging app in the world may be rolling out a stream of updates and new features with very beta and final release over the past few month, but it could just be that it is waiting for the final release of iOS 13 and Android Q to roll out the Dark Mode goodness. However, if you really don’t want to wait, there are workarounds to get Dark Mode working on WhatsApp on your Android phone or iPhone, right away. If you are using an Android phone, you will need to be running a beta version of Android Q to enable the Dark Mode for WhatsApp. A lot of Android phones...

Wannabe cars of India; From Maruti Vitara Brezza to Jeep Compass, to Bolero-Pajero & more

The Indian car market is full of modified cars. While some of them are modified with elegance and really look unique, many others are modified to look like various other cars. We bring you five such modified cars. Maruti Vitara Brezza – Jeep Compass The Maruti Vitara Brezza is the largest selling utility vehicle in India. The sub 4-meter compact SUV has a lot of buyers and many of them have modified the car to look like Land Rovers. After the launch of Jeep Compass in the Indian market, many Vitara Brezza owners have swapped the front grille of the Brezza with the iconic 7-slat grille of the Jeep. It sure looks good and different but too wannabe, we think. Mahindra Bolero – Mitsubishi Pajero The Mahindra Bolero used to be the top-selling UV in the Indian market before the arrival of the Maruti Brezza. The rugged SUV is quite popular in Tier II and Tier III cities of India. The Mitsubishi Pajero too has quite a fan following in India. The Pajero SFX became extr...

Ather Energy to launch a high-performance electric motorcycle next; Details revealed

Ather Energy, an IT Madras based electric mobility start-up, has just launched two new electric scooters, the 340 and 450. After successfully bringing its first electric scooters to the market, Ather is now aiming a lot higher. The start-up will soon begin work on a high performance electric motorcycle, which will be launched in about two years from now. Tarun Mehta, co-founder of Ather Energy, has just revealed this in an interview to the  TimesOfIndia . Here’s what he said about Ather’s plans to enter the motorcycle segment in India, “Scooters now outsell bikes in all the top 10 cities. It’s painful to drive a petrol bike in crowded cities. In  Bengaluru you can never leave the clutch, and you’ll have this wrist pain. You have zero storage space. With electric  we hope to resolve some of that, you won’t need the clutch, hopefully we’ll be able to build storage space. Half our  company wanted to build a bike, but we built a scooter. Very soon we should be...