Facebook is soon going to make WhatsApp a source of revenue as it is reported to include ads in WhatsApp Status.
The application introduced WhatsApp Status, similar to Snapchat Stories through which people can post stuff for 24 hours. Now, parent company Facebook will include ads in the app's Status tab from next year in order to generate revenue.
Wall Street Journal cited WhatsApp officials verifying the news that ads will be shown in WhatsApp Status from next year, powered by Facebook’s local advertising system and will ‘help familiarize users with business’ on WhatsApp.
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“WhatsApp does not currently run ads in Status though this represents a future goal for us, starting in 2019. We will move slowly and carefully and provide more details before we place any Ads in Status,” Tech Crunch quoted a WhatsApp spokesperson.
According to the report, WhatsApp will charge organizations between $0.005 and $0.09 per potential customer reached. The report stated that more than 100 companies, including Netflix and Uber, have already started testing the feature before complete roll out in 2019. These ads will serve as a money-spinner for WhatsApp as the use of the app as a customer service tool will be promoted.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg also informed that WhatsApp Status hit the benchmark of 450 million active users back in May, as compared to Snapchat Stories’ 191 million daily active users, making it more convincing for advertisers to put their ads on the messaging app and help it earn large profits.
As per India Today, these ads will appear in the Status tab only and the user can choose to ignore these ads by just leaving them untouched. There will also be an option of muting these ads in order to avoid them.
Facebook also serve ads in Instagram Stories, and they will serve as a model for ads on WhatsApp Statuses. The newspaper quoted WhatsApp’s Chief Operating Officer, Matthew Idema saying, “We’ve seen it working well on Instagram and so we’re learning a lot from that.”